Resignations and regulatory orders at Mizuho in wake of IT failures

Following a series of IT failures earlier this year, Mizuho Financial Group Inc and Mizuho Bank Ltd have received a business improvement order from the Financial Services Agency of Japan.

Mizuho had to shut down 70% of its ATMs in February

The bank also revealed that president and group CEO Tatsufumi Sakai and senior executive officer Satoshi Ishii will step down from their roles effective 1 April and 17 January 2022, respectively.

Both resignations have been accepted by the group board.

Four system failures hit Mizuho Bank in two weeks at the end of February 2021, including a temporary shutdown of 70% of the bank’s ATMs.

Mizuho Bank president Koji Fujiwara had already stepped down from his role at the firm in June in light of the outages.

As well as the improvement order, Mizuho Bank has received a corrective action order from the Ministry of Finance of Japan.

A bank statement reads: “As a financial institution bearing responsibility for maintaining societal infrastructure, we deeply apologize for the inconvenience and concern we have caused to our customers and society by allowing these system failures to occur repeatedly in a short period of time and, as a consequence, failing to adequately fulfil our role in facilitating smooth settlements and failing to adequately ensure thorough operations under the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act of Japan.”

It added that Mizuho Financial Group and Mizuho Bank are “treating the Financial Services Agency’s business improvement order and the Ministry of Finance’s corrective action order with the utmost seriousness”.

“We are fully accounting for our mistakes and endeavoring to formulate and implement business improvement plans and measures to prevent further incidents in conformance with the orders.”

Mizuho must formulate a business improvement plan that will include measures to prevent further incidents; put in place a corporate management governance framework that will ensure stable operations in IT systems; and take specific initiatives to improve operations, addressing the root causes of the system failures.

The business improvement plan must be submitted by 17 January 2022, followed by reporting every three months on progress made in implementing that plan.