Consideration from the aspect of Japanese Trust
Act for Promotion of Risk Sharing CorporatePension Plan
Satoshi Watanabe（Resona Bank, Ltd.）“Risk-sharing corporate pension plan”(hereinafter referred to as“RS plan”), newly launched corporate pension scheme in January 2017
and was implemented by companies gradually. In order to promote
implementation of RS plan more, I researched required businessconduct of relating parties, i.e. settlor (employer) and trustee (trustbank), based on the clarification of the role and responsibility of suchparties. Financial Services Agency published“Principles of customeroriented business conduct”(hereinafter referred to as“the Principles”)
in March 2017, and, in my research, I analyzed the effect of thePrinciples to the management of corporate pension operation by trustbank.
I first outlined the characteristics of RS plan and mentioned
important points for managing RS plan, compared with theconventional Defined Benefit corporate pension scheme. Subsequently,
the following three points on the legal role and obligation of theemployer and the trust bank were pointed out.
(1) the employer is responsible for the overall operation andcontrol of the corporate pension plan,(2) the trust bank, which entered into a pension trust contract
with the employer, is responsible under Japanese Trust Act for(i) segregating pension asset from its own asset and (ii) investing― 165 ―

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pension asset with discretion based on employer’s instruction of asset
management, and(3) the employer and the trust bank generally enter into three
types of mandate contracts ((i) a consulting contract related toretirement benefit design, (ii) an outsourcing contract regarding
pension plan management, and (iii) a leading manager contract
regarding cash management of pension plan), and the trust bank shallfulfill the obligation of each contract with duty of care of prudent
manager.
Based on the above mentioned roles and obligations of theconcerned parties, I considered the customer-oriented business conductof trust banks in corporate pension operations. The customer-oriented
business conduct is regarded to be constituted by three factors, suchas“customer”,“beneficiary”and“the best interests of both thecustomers and the beneficiary”and the definition of which shall beclarified for the consideration. In my research, I defined these factors
as follows:“customer”of corporate pension trust : employer,“beneficiary”of corporate pension trust : recipients of pension
benefit and participating employees to the pension plan, and“the best interests of both the customers and the beneficiary”ofcorporate pension trust : the state under which the right of receiving
pension payment is secured by the employer and the beneficiaries areable to receive pension payment subscribed in the provision of thepension plan in the future.
Moreover I insisted that although management of the corporate
pension plan is primarily conducted at the solo discretion of theemployer, the trust bank shall intervene and conduct its business to― 166 ―

the extent of preventing and correcting the instability of the pension
plan management.
Based on the above mentioned examination, I analyzed thefollowing 4 issues which might be capable of making the pension planmanagement unstable.
(1) designing pension plan : whether reduction adjustment ofpension benefit occurs frequently,(2) conclusion of labor-management agreement for pension plan
introduction : whether the employer explain the plan sufficiently,(3) notice of reduction adjustment : whether the employer timely
pre-disclose the relevant information to the beneficiaries, and(4) change of asset management policy : whether the asset
management policy is changed unfairly from its original design, or
whether such change is timely disclosed to the beneficiaries.
As a result of the analysis, I evaluated the actual business conductof trust banks, which supports employer in managing pension plan,
as being reasonably managed according to the Principles in general.
Finally, I concluded that further enhancement of effective support
from trust banks to employer shall be necessary for the new scheme,
RS plan, to be well implemented in the future.

― 167 ―