Hitachi Ltd. and the Nomura Research Institute said Wednesday that they have tied up in the in-house portal site service.

The new service is intended to jointly give such information as finance and welfare to client firms' employees at their original portal sites. In April 2002, the two firms will start with financial information services.

The two companies will charge client firms based on their number of employees. A company with a workforce of more than 500 will be charged about 150,000 yen.

Hitachi and NRI expect to draw 2,000 companies, or some 10 million people, to the new service by the end of 2005.