The Financial Services Agency envisions creating a new category of regional private-sector financial institutions whose functions will be limited to providing loans to small businesses and citizens in low-income brackets, according to FSA officials.
The FSA envisages getting the lenders to complement the lending functions of credit associations, known as "shinkin" banks, and credit unions that are finding it difficult to grant loan applications from such low-income people at a time when income disparities are expanding among citizens belonging to a range of income brackets, they said Thursday.
The FSA will seek views from a working group of the Financial System Council about the planned financial institutions. The agency will mention the idea of creating such lenders in an interim report it will submit Friday to the working group on cooperative financial institutions, they said.