How long has it been since fiduciary duty first became a topic in Japan's asset management industry? Personally, I distinctly recall the term, with its definition appended, entering the asset management and pension fund industries' general lexicon in the latter half of the 1990s, when government first started talking about passing the Defined Benefit Corporate Pension Plan Act. Why is this term now attracting renewed attention more than 20 years later?

Faced with a challenging business environment, major investment banks have been pursuing improved efficiency and risk reduction by teaming up with each other to establish reference data utilities. Data management expertise is now more crucial than ever.

With better access to financial services widely recognized as essential to reducing poverty, financial inclusion has been gaining importance on the global policy agenda. Governments and international institutions have been pursuing FinTech-enabled initiatives to promote financial inclusion in recent years. Financial inclusion will likely remain a high-priority policy objective in not only developing countries but developed countries also.