Once a decade Japanese companies usually replace an old system completely with a new one, which is not a practice in the United States. Other factors also exist. The original developers may have already left work, and related documents are rarely found. These conditions together seem to snowball, and make it hard to solve the Year 2000 problem. That often leads U.S. banks to spend a lot more money than Japanese banks.
Japanese banks have some problems of a different nature as well.
They employ too many in-house engineers, which pushes costs up, and they continue periodic modification of programs, including those of less strategic value. However, as to the Year 2000 problem, Japan has had a better chance of finding easier solutions, the Japanese magazine said. Nikkei Computer found that as has been noted, it is apparently a wrong notion that the Japanese financial sector, apart from other industries, is slower in coping with the millennium problem than U.S. companies. Even so, strong policies for intensely investigating the progress of solving the Year 2000 problem have been set forth by the Financial Inspection and Supervision Agency, the Bank of Japan and the Tokyo Stock Exchange, probably in response to some guidance presented by the United States. We have prepared for the Year 2000 with a long-term plan, and are seeing reasonable progress.