The Financial Services Agency on Saturday replaced the Financial Supervisory Agency as the nation's top bank regulator, assuming the duty of salvaging Japan's bad loan-swamped banking industry.
Its predecessor was launched two years ago amid public outrage over the Finance Ministry's bank-related oversights and blunders, which are deemed to be a chief cause of the accumulation of massive bad loans at Japan's banks.
As part of the government's organizational realignment, the new regulator has absorbed the Finance Ministry's Financial System Planning Bureau, which is in charge of devising policies relating to banks and other financial institutions.