Cooperation Business
Business Outline
Expanding the loan guarantee business, and applying our credit investigation expertise
SMBC Consumer Finance engages in the loan guarantee business, building upon years of experience in credit investigation and loan management. In this business, we conduct a guarantee screening as the loan guarantee company after our partner financial institution receives the loan application when a customer submits it to a financial institution for an unsecured personal loan. Based on the result of our guarantee screening, the financial institution provides the customer with the loan. If it becomes difficult for the customer to repay the loan, we will repay the financial institution on the behalf of the customer. In the loan guarantee business, which commenced in April 2003, we now provide loan guarantees to financial institutions in many parts of the country after forming a loan guarantee partnership with SMBC, a Group company, in 2005.
Partner financial institutions(as of June 30, 2023)
Guaranteed loans outstanding
At our Guarantee Centers in Tokyo and Fukuoka, we are entrusted with guarantee screening and reception business for unsecured personal loans provided by our partner financial institutions. In October 2018, they received COPC®*2 certification, an international standard for contact center business quality assurance, for the first time in Japan as a guarantee center that provides BPO operations*1. We also dispatch our employees to several financial institutions with which we have an alliance, including the SMBC Card Loan Plaza which opened in 2005, and harness our expertise to work together in running call centers by providing support for their establishment and operation. We will continue to meet a broad range of customer funding needs by developing products tailored to the characteristics and needs of our partner financial institutions, make proposals on sales promotions and other matters, and properly conduct credit investigation.
*1 Business Process Outsourcing. It refers to the continuous entrustment of a series of business processes from outside companies.
*2 The COPC®CX Standard for CSPs Release 6.2 is a global quality assurance standard specifically for the contact center business that is formulated to improve the level of customer satisfaction and ensure efficient operations. Certification is given to contact centers that have achieved and maintained the standard at a superior level, particularly in relation to customer service performance.
Support tailored to a wide variety of needs
Expansion of our loan guarantee business and creation of new businesses and services
Our medium-term management plan for fiscal 2023 onward states “expanding into new business areas” as one of our strategies, and we are working to create new businesses and services while further expanding our loan guarantee business by providing solutions designed for financial institutions. As solutions for financial institutions, we are promoting the planning and sales of (1) external guarantees for housing loans, (2) provision of the Loan Operations Digitization Platform, and (3) new partnerships in guaranteeing personal loans.
External guarantees for housing loans
By building a system of collaboration with SMBC Guarantee Co., Ltd., which became our subsidiary in 2022, we are newly selling guarantees for housing loan products offered by regional financial institutions.
Provision of the Loan Operations Digitization Platform
In collaboration with NTT Data Japan Corporation, we have built a platform that supports the digitalization of overall operations regarding loans, and we have begun providing the platform to financial institutions. In the personal loan business, financial institutions and loan guarantee companies are faced with inflated system costs and more complicated administrative operations. By resolving these issues through the realization of digital transformation and providing new value to financial institutions and users, we aim to contribute to the expansion of the personal loan market and become the industry standard.
New partnerships in guaranteeing personal loans
Leveraging the expertise we have developed in credit and loan management, we currently partner with 188 financial institutions to provide them with personal loan guarantees. Aiming to further expand our loan guarantee business, we are promoting new loan guarantee partnerships with financial institutions by strengthening our collaboration with the SMBC Group and providing the Loan Operations Digitization Platform. For the creation of new businesses and services, we are promoting collaboration and co-creation with corporate customers, mainly based on the SMBC Group’s customer base. By leveraging the expertise we have cultivated in consumer finance, we aim to propose solutions that may contribute to the revitalization of our partners’ core business and their business diversification, thereby developing our new business models.