Keiji Minami, President and CEO, Sony Bank Inc.

Embodying Sony's "unconventional" DNA through a "customer-focused" approach

Keiji Minami, President and CEO, Sony Bank Inc.

■ Profile

Born in Tokushima Prefecture, he graduated from the Graduate School of Science and Engineering at Waseda University and then joined Sanwa Bank (now Mitsubishi UFJ Bank).

He joined Yahoo in 2008. In 2010, he joined Sony Bank and served as head of marketing, before becoming a director of Smartlink Network (now Sony Payment Services) in 2011. He served as a director and executive vice president, and a director and senior managing executive officer, before assuming his current position in June 2021.

Sony Bank has held the top spot in the Oricon Customer Satisfaction® Survey's "Home Loan" rankings for a long period of time, from 2011 to 2021. We spoke with President and CEO Keiji Minami to find out why the bank has maintained its top spot in customer satisfaction for 11 long years. The answer lies in a culture that embodies Sony's "thinking outside the box" approach from a customer perspective.

■The part-time jobs I enjoyed were doing odd jobs for apartment construction and managing events.

　During my first and second years at university, I worked part-time to help with tuition fees. I tried a variety of part-time jobs, but there are two in particular that I'm glad I did.

The first job was doing odd jobs at an apartment building construction site. Odd jobs are surprisingly difficult. You can't do them unless you know a lot about them, and there are no set manuals, so you have to act flexibly. Sony Bank also handles home loans, so I sometimes have the opportunity to talk with people from real estate companies. Even though I was just a part-timer at the time, I had experience and knowledge of construction sites, so sometimes the conversations turned to construction work. When I think about it, I feel like that experience is still useful to me today.

The second job was managing the dispatch of personnel to events. I gathered about 100 students and arranged a beer event in the shopping district. In this part-time job, I not only worked as a member of an organization, but also learned about operations and management, such as making arrangements to avoid vacancies even if students suddenly canceled and could not attend.

■ I was immersed in studying during my third and fourth years at university in order to go to graduate school.

However, in my third and fourth years of university, I completely changed from my first and second years, when I was constantly working part-time jobs, and instead studied hard to get into graduate school. I studied from first period to sixth period every day. Looking back now, I think it was a good experience, as I've never had another opportunity to study so intensively. After that, I successfully advanced to graduate school, and conducted DNA research, holed up in the lab. There were times when I would stay up all night researching, and I was definitely researching for 10 hours a day. I think I had a well-balanced university life, where I was able to gain experience in completing one thing thoroughly.

■ Indirectly experiencing the dream of starting a business

　After graduating from graduate school, I wanted to start my own business in the future, so I aimed for a bank that would give me many opportunities to work with various industries, and I ended up working at Sanwa Bank. I chose Sanwa Bank from among the many banks available because I felt that it had a good balance between strict hierarchical relationships and friendly relationships, which suited me. The content of the work is of course important, but the hierarchical atmosphere is also important. Work is not something you do alone, after all. It would also be helpful for students to take a good look at the relationships between seniors and juniors when visiting alumni.

　I then joined Sanwa Bank, and my days there were very stimulating. I experienced the merger of Sanwa Bank and Tokai Bank, which was the model for the drama, a business partnership with a Brazilian bank, and was involved in the launch of many new companies. Looking back now, I feel like I was often involved in negotiating the size of the company and launching new companies.

　After that, I moved to Sony Bank and continued to be involved in numerous startups at its subsidiary Sony Payment Services. I was involved in the launch of S.RIDE, a taxi dispatch service in which the Sony Group has invested, and in the early days of BASE, an online shop creation service, where I was involved in payment processing.

　Although I didn't start a business myself, I was able to gain a lot of entrepreneurial experience by helping others start their own businesses. When you start a business yourself, you basically only launch one company, but as a company employee, you can be involved in a variety of things, which is fun. As a result, I was able to indirectly fulfill my original dream of starting my own business.

■Sony's culture of valuing people's dreams

　Since joining Sony Bank, I have felt that the bank embodies Sony's "think outside the box" philosophy through its "thorough customer perspective." Sony's purpose, "To fill the world with emotion, through the power of creativity and technology," is a common guiding principle for the entire Sony Group. As the Sony Financial Group, which handles the financial business within the Sony Group, we have a vision of "Becoming a financial group that supports the peace of mind and dreams of each individual through our people-oriented approach and the power of technology, striving to create a society where people can live fulfilling lives." At Sony Bank, we too are committed to providing financial support for the emotions and memories that come with life events like home purchases.

This is a story from when I was working at Sony Payment Services. One day, we received a request from Sony Music. They said, "We see how difficult it is for fans to line up for over two hours in the scorching sun to buy merchandise, so we'd like to use Sony's technology to create a system that makes it easier for them to buy merchandise." As a result, we released a new prepayment service for concert merchandise, which was well received by fans.

When we were creating this service, we weren't really thinking about whether it would be profitable or not. We just wanted to change the world for the better from the customer's perspective. It was at that moment that I realized that there were many people in the group who were serious about this, not thinking, "If we do this in this way, we'll make a profit," but rather, "We might incur a loss, but if we work hard to create something that will make our customers happy, we'll make it work."

　I feel that many of the people I work with at Sony Bank share the same values, and it would be nice if the people I will be working with in the future also share the same values. I believe that job interviews are a place to align our values ​​with each other. It is important to find a company that shares the same values ​​as the ones that students hold dear.

■ massage

　I'm sure that many of you who read the student newspaper have taken university entrance exams. The important thing about university entrance exams is how well you can overcome your weaknesses. I'm sure that you all overcame your weaknesses by repeatedly solving the questions in your textbooks that you got wrong. However, the skills required in society are the exact opposite. It's important to be able to get outstanding scores in the areas that you're good at. I hope that while you're a university student, you'll do your best to find out what you like and what you're good at.

Interviewed by Student Newspaper Online on June 27, 2022 by Yusuke Suzuki, a fourth-year student at Hosei University