Mizuho Securities Co. aims to increase the balance of individual customer assets under its management by 1.5-fold to ¥60 trillion in 10 years, its president and chief executive officer, Koichi Iida, said in a recent interview. The Mizuho Financial Group Inc. unit will focus on demand from working generations for the formation of assets in an effort to achieve the goal, Iida said. The company will enhance collaboration with Mizuho Bank, another Mizuho Financial unit, to encourage customers to transfer some of their bank deposits to investment trusts and other financial products, he said. "The key is whether we will be able to make offers suitable for individuals' life plans," Iida said. Mizuho Securities will utilize artificial intelligence technology to enhance the quality of service, he said. Specifically, the company will have sales staff share the know-how of personnel adept at dealing with clients and build a system to speed up improvement in operations, he said.

Following the massive theft of customer assets held with Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange operator Coincheck Inc., the Financial Services Agency plans to conduct on-site inspections at some other exchange operators this week based on the revised law on fund settlement, sources with knowledge of the matter have said. The FSA will check safety measures for the cryptocurrency exchange operators' computer systems and their methods for managing customer assets, and will apply administrative penalties if problems are found, the sources said. On Jan. 26, Coincheck lost almost all of the NEM coins belonging to some 260,000 customers, worth around ¥58 billion at the time, due to a hack of the company's computer system. On Feb. 1, the FSA ordered the 31 other virtual currency exchange operators in the country to check their safety systems -- including measures to guard against hackers, how customer assets are managed, and other areas -- and report the results to the agency. The agency examined the reports and found it necessary to carry out detailed inspections on some operators in order to prevent another theft of customer assets, according to the sources.