Mizuho Financial Group Inc. plans to change its personnel policy to allow employees to hold side jobs by the end of next March, the first such move by a mega-bank. By helping employees seek new challenges and opportunities, Mizuho hopes they will use the experience and ideas they acquire outside of the group to create new financial services at Mizuho, President Tatsufumi Sakai said in a recent interview. "I want everyone to refine their skills through a diverse range of challenges so that they can all be specialists in their fields," he said. The 59-year-old chief executive hopes new job opportunities will encourage employees to make use of their experiences in startups, manufacturing companies and other industries to create new business ideas for Mizuho. The initiative is expected to be introduced in the second half of fiscal 2019, after rules on labor and information management are worked out.

Mizuho and Mitsubishi are speeding up the adoption of artificial intelligence. The two companies have agreed to mutually independent deals with tech firms that will help them go beyond routine banking tasks. Mizuho Financial Group joined IBM to develop a forecasting engine based on artificial intelligence. The engine is imitating the human brain's learning structure to help forecast moves of the financial market, the bank said in a statement. Technically speaking the tool uses artificial neural network technology.

Mizuho Financial Group Inc. will start artificial-intelligence trading to bolster its Japanese equity business, according to people with knowledge of the plan. Japan's third-biggest lender will begin offering an algorithm-based AI trading service to some large institutional clients in Japan and elsewhere in Asia, the people said, asking not to be identified because the plan is private. The product attempts to predict how stock prices in Japan will change over an hour and find the best time to trade, they said. Global banks are seeking to improve the quality of their trading execution and equity research before the European Union's revision of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, or MiFID II, comes into force in January. Under the new rules, brokerages will be required to separate research fees from trading commissions to ensure investors pay fair prices for the services, a move that may spur competition.

Mizuho Financial Group plans to set up a joint company in June with major trading house Itochu and other companies to create new businesses in the field of financial services using information technology, or fintech, according to informed sources. After the establishment of the joint company, Mizuho and its partners will consider new financial services such as electronic money issuance under a common brand with other financial institutions including regional banks, the sources said. The other companies include Dai-ichi Life Insurance, a unit of Dai-ichi Life Holdings. They will also discuss such ideas as using e-money for shopping and remittances and launching electronic settlement services, all mainly by smartphone, and automating clerical work at financial institutions using artificial intelligence. In the future, the joint company will offer the systems and financial services it develops to other businesses, aiming to develop earnings from service charges.

Mizuho Financial Group Inc. has entered talks with information technology startup Metaps Inc. about forming a business alliance on settlement services using advanced financial technology, Jiji Press learned Thursday. Metaps is a leading provider of fintech services, which use artificial intelligence and big data. The envisaged tie-up is aimed at developing new settlement services, sources said. The predecessor of Metaps was established in Tokyo in September 2007. The firm offers online settlement services, including Spike.

Mizuho Bank has carried out testing for new banking services through the Facebook bot and Amazon Echo. The tests took place in Silicon Valley, California, in partnership with two other Japanese firms – Information Services International – Dentsu and Nomura Research Institute. The companies are looking to use CUI (conversational user interfaces) to develop platforms to provide financial information and services using AI and chat. In the trials, the Facebook bot platform responded with an automatic chat format, and the Japanese trio are developing a new messenger prototype to help customers open a new account. It is also possible to connect to Mizuho Messenger, which is currently in service.