Since the so-called Big Bang in Japan in 1996 up until today, the Japanese government has been striving continuously to legislate the Investment Services Law as a specific yet critical part of its financial reform policy. Most experts agree that it is most likely, that the enactment of the law which is based on the capital market concept, will transform fundamentally the legal system that the Japanese government has adopted so far to regulate its financial market.
Throughout the whole discussion-for-legislation process, a number of issues have been raised including how to make the new law conform and/or be consistent with the legal system that governs the Japanese capital market and,- which include the Commercial Law, the Securities Exchange Law and other related laws and regulations. For this reason, at this time it seems difficult for any one to predict precisely into what kind of landscape the country's financial market will be reorganized and transformed.
By studying the discussion process undertaken so far, one may expect that under the new market-governing legal system, which will emerge as a result of the full enactment of the new law , that investors will be protected more securely and more broadly than under the system currently in practice, which is quite business- and/or activity-specific, and at the same time more diverse products and services will become available in the market. The discussions conducted so far relating to the new law can be summed up as follows.
First, the new law attempts to put both a) investment products already regulated by their respectively related laws and/or regulations and b) yet-undefined financial products into one category, that is, "investment products," which together in turn will become subject to the new law.
Second, under the new law, the business of investment service is likely to be divided into three specific areas: sales of investment products, recommendation/solicitation, and asset management/custody. Therefore, it is likely that each of those activities will be regulated "respectively" by the new law.
Third, the application of the Investment Service Law is in general expected to be conducted with respect to three broad yet separate areas: the range of investment service business activities, the restrictions on entry into investment service business, and the regulations on activities conducted by investment service providers. As of now it is deemed most likely that the restrictions on entry into investment service business will be carried out based on the registration principle. In the meantime, the regulations on activities will be conducted based on a new system as the reorganized rendition of the existing system - both horizontally and in the way to better focus the functionality of each activity.
Fourth, with respect to regulating the collective-investment Scheme business, any existing laws and/or regulations that have not been in actual use will be eliminated or reorganized. Also under consideration are measures to reorganize the new law's legal relationship with other existing laws and/or regulations, and thereby establish firmly its legal precedence status.
Fifth, a more advanced and improved regulation system is likely to emerge as a result of the enactment of the new law. With this new system, the Japanese government is expected to a) speed up its efforts to restructure the administrative system that it currently employs to control the investment service business by introducing the so-called Japanese version of SEC, b) to further strengthen its market-monitoring capabilities for the purpose of protecting investors through the implementation of monetary penalty systems and complementary revision of the country's civil laws, c) aggressively become involved in reforming self-regulating financial institutions, again, in such a way as to offer further protection investors, and d) reinforce its ability to implement compliance activities against investment service providers.