Japan Banks: We Raise Our Fair Value Estimates After Monetary Policy Change, but Normalization Will Be Slow

We increase our fair value estimates for Japanese banks after the Bank of Japan's decision last week to make the operation of its yield curve control policy more flexible. The yield on 10-year Japanese government bonds, or JGBs, has risen as far as 0.625% today after the central bank redesignated its previous 0.5% hard upper limit as a mere reference value and said it will now conduct purchase operations to maintain the level at its discretion rather than automatically in unlimited size. This affects our fair value calculations for Japanese banks, as we believe it changes the outlook for yen interest rates and credit costs in future years, though we do not expect much impact on earnings in the fiscal year ending March 2024.