The Japanese firm, with an eye on how the government wants to encourage savers to diversify and build more wealth for retirement, wants to compete more vigorously in the wealth management arena, a top figure has explained.

Mizuho Financial Group wants to strengthen its wealth management business and compete with Nomura to attract affluent Japanese to invest more of their savings, Bloomberg reported yesterday. 

Through its brokerage unit, Japan’s third-largest bank is targeting individuals with assets exceeding ¥500 million ($3.4 million), Mizuho Securities president Yoshiro Hamamoto told the news service in an interview. Over the next few years, it will reassign sales staff and dispatch more employees to branches to provide face-to-face services for these high net worth customers.

As the report noted, Japanese banks are building their wealth management operations to boost fee income and capitalise on a trend of households seeking to protect their assets from emerging inflation. The government is also encouraging citizens to invest more to ease strains on the retirement system amidst an ageing population.

The report said that although Mizuho Securities’ investment banking and global markets divisions have driven profits, its business serving individual clients has lagged. The firm’s assets under management – a key metric for the retail and business banking division – stood at about ÂĄ98 trillion as of June, including revenue from its stake in online broker Rakuten Securities, versus Nomura’s ÂĄ153 trillion.

“We’ll learn from Nomura where we can, but we also aim to catch up by using our unique approach,” Hamamoto said. The company has been recruiting talent from Nomura and studying its methods, while also leveraging Mizuho’s strengths across its banking, trust and securities divisions, he said.

Nomura’s wealth arm has been growing on several fronts. In July 2023, Nomura expanded its international wealth arm by taking up residence in the Dubai International Financial Centre. In January 2025, a former chief operating officer at the private bank of Deutsche Bank, Sudhir Nemali, joined Nomura’s international wealth arm in the COO and managing director position. He is based in Singapore.