---
title: "Trust Companies Association of Japan (Shintaku Kyōkai / 信託協会)"
aliases:
  - "financial-regulators/shintaku-kyokai"
  - "shintaku-kyokai"
  - "Shintaku Kyōkai"
  - "Shintaku Kyokai"
  - "Trust Companies Association of Japan"
  - "信託協会"
  - "Trust Association Japan"
  - "TAJ"
domain: financial-regulators
created: 2026-05-24
last_updated: 2026-05-24
last_tended: 2026-05-24
review_by: 2026-11-20
confidence: likely
tags: [JapanFG, industry-body, trust, SRO-adjacent, FSA, trust-business-act, public-source]
status: active
sources:
  - "https://www.shintaku-kyokai.or.jp/"
  - "https://www.shintaku-kyokai.or.jp/profile/"
  - "https://www.shintaku-kyokai.or.jp/profile/member/"
  - "https://www.fsa.go.jp/menkyo/menkyo.html"
  - "https://www.fsa.go.jp/common/law/guide/trust/"
  - "https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/law/416AC0000000154"
---

# Trust Companies Association of Japan (Shintaku Kyōkai / 信託協会)

## TL;DR

Shintaku Kyōkai (信託協会) is Japan's industry body for trust banks and trust companies operating under the Trust Business Act (信託業法). Its membership covers both the major trust banks (the trust-bank lineage from megabank groups plus standalone trust banks) and the independent trust-company universe. Like other industry bodies it is a general incorporated association — not the FSA, not a statutory SRO — but its model rules and joint guidance on trust-product disclosure, beneficiary-protection, and trust-administration practice operate as de-facto standards across the trust industry.

## Wiki route

This entry sits under [[financial-regulators/INDEX|financial-regulators INDEX]]. Read it with peer banking industry bodies [[financial-regulators/zenginkyo|Japanese Bankers Association]], [[financial-regulators/zenchugin-kyo|Regional Banks Association of Japan]], [[financial-regulators/dai2-chigin-kyo|Second Association of Regional Banks]], and [[financial-regulators/zenshin-kyo|Zenshin-kyō]] for the bank-side stack, plus [[financial-regulators/jsda|JSDA]] for the securities lane that intersects with trust-based asset-management products. For the trust-company universe see [[trust-banks/trust-companies-japan-index|Japan trust companies registry index]]; statutory backdrop sits at [[financial-licenses/INDEX]]; depositor-protection counterpart is [[financial-regulators/yokin-hoken-kiko|Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan]]; wider operator universe is in [[banking/INDEX]].

## Legal route / statutory position (法令の根拠)

Trust banks are regulated under both the Banking Act (for deposit-taking) and the Trust Business Act (for trust business). Standalone trust companies are regulated under the Trust Business Act alone in two licensed types — 運用型信託会社 (operating type) and 管理型信託会社 (management type) — per the FSA list referenced in [[trust-banks/trust-companies-japan-index|Japan trust companies registry index]].[^fsa-licensed] Shintaku Kyōkai is a general incorporated association (一般社団法人) of trust-business operators with no statutory rulemaking power; the FSA's trust-business supervision guideline is the binding regulatory perimeter,[^fsa-trust] and authorized FIEA self-regulatory organizations are listed separately by the FSA.[^fsa-licensed]

The association's effective authority is membership-contractual: model templates, joint statistical reporting, financial ADR contact for trust customer complaints, and joint industry positions in FSA / METI / Justice Ministry consultations on trust law, succession, asset management, and tokenized-trust topics.

## Function / scope

The association's published outline organises its work as:[^shintaku-profile]

1. **Policy advocacy and research** — joint positions on Trust Business Act amendments, Trust Act (信託法) interpretation, tax treatment of trust products (especially succession-purpose trusts and tokenized-asset trusts), accounting and disclosure standards, and FSA / BOJ consultation responses.
2. **Industry self-discipline and model rules** — model templates for trust-product explanation, beneficiary-protection, fiduciary-duty operationalisation, AML/CFT for trust business, and elder-customer-care frameworks; financial ADR contact body for trust customer complaints.
3. **Statistics and disclosure** — quarterly statistics on trust assets under management, by trust type (money trust, pension trust, securities trust, real-estate trust, tokenization-related trust, etc.), plus aggregated industry positioning data.
4. **Public communication and education** — the shintaku-kyokai.or.jp portal, consumer-facing material on trust products and succession-trust use cases, and joint statements on trust-industry digital transformation.

The association also coordinates closely with [[financial-regulators/zenginkyo|Zenginkyō]] on shared themes affecting trust banks as banking-law entities (deposit-side rules, payments infrastructure, AML/CFT) and with the Japan Investment Advisers Association / [[financial-regulators/jsda|JSDA]] when trust-based products intersect investment-management and securities regulation.

## Membership / governance

Membership covers two strata:[^shintaku-members]

- **Trust banks** (信託銀行) such as [[trust-banks/mitsubishi-ufj-trust-bank|Mitsubishi UFJ Trust Bank]] (where the page exists), [[trust-banks/smtb|Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank (SMTB)]], the trust banks of the Mizuho group, [[trust-banks/smbc-trust-bank|SMBC Trust Bank]], [[trust-banks/nomura-trust-bank|Nomura Trust Bank]], [[trust-banks/sbi-shinsei-trust-bank|SBI Shinsei Trust Bank]], and [[trust-banks/custody-bank|Custody Bank of Japan]] for trust-bank custody business.
- **Trust companies** (信託会社) drawn from the FSA list of 38 trust companies as of 2026-03-31 referenced in [[trust-banks/trust-companies-japan-index|Japan trust companies registry index]] — examples include [[trust-banks/fpg-trust|FPG Trust]], [[trust-banks/asahi-trust|Asahi Trust]], [[trust-banks/alterna-trust|Alterna Trust]], [[trust-banks/fintech-global-trust|Fintech Global Trust]], [[trust-banks/sekisui-house-trust|Sekisui House Trust]], and others on the registry.

Governance follows general-incorporated-association rules: rotating chair drawn from senior executives of major trust banks, standing committees on legal, tax, accounting, IT, AML/CFT, beneficiary-protection, and statistics, with a Tokyo secretariat.

## Related industry adjacency

Trust is a cross-cutting business: trust banks are also banks (so they're also in scope of [[financial-regulators/zenginkyo|JBA]] standards), trust-based investment products intersect [[financial-regulators/jsda|JSDA]] rules where they involve securities-form products, and tokenized-trust structures connect to digital-asset infrastructure such as [[payment-firms/progmat|Progmat]]. On the failure-resolution side, trust banks fall under [[financial-regulators/yokin-hoken-kiko|Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan]] for their deposit-taking side; trust companies do not take deposits and therefore have a different failure-resolution surface (segregated trust assets remain with beneficiaries by trust-law construction). For the rest of the industry-body stack see [[financial-regulators/zenchugin-kyo|Regional Banks Association of Japan]], [[financial-regulators/dai2-chigin-kyo|Second Association of Regional Banks]], [[financial-regulators/zenshin-kyo|Zenshin-kyō]], [[financial-regulators/seiho-kyokai|Life Insurance Association of Japan]], and [[financial-regulators/sonpo-kyokai|General Insurance Association of Japan]].

## Why this page matters

Trust vocabulary inside JapanFG entries (信託受託高, 公益信託, 受益権 etc.) often references the association's published statistics without naming it. The Shintaku Kyōkai page is the route anchor for those references and disambiguates between the industry-body layer, the operational layer (individual trust banks / trust companies), and the statutory layer (Trust Business Act / Trust Act). It also makes clear that the association covers **both** trust banks and trust companies — a unified industry voice — distinct from the registry route at [[trust-banks/trust-companies-japan-index]] which only enumerates trust-company-side licensed operators.

## Related

- [[financial-regulators/INDEX|financial-regulators INDEX]]
- [[trust-banks/trust-companies-japan-index|Japan trust companies registry index]]
- [[financial-regulators/zenginkyo|Japanese Bankers Association]]
- [[financial-regulators/zenchugin-kyo|Regional Banks Association of Japan]]
- [[financial-regulators/dai2-chigin-kyo|Second Association of Regional Banks]]
- [[financial-regulators/zenshin-kyo|National Association of Shinkin Banks]]
- [[financial-regulators/jsda|JSDA]]
- [[financial-regulators/yokin-hoken-kiko|Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan]]
- [[financial-regulators/fsa|FSA]]
- [[financial-licenses/INDEX]]
- [[trust-banks/smtb|Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank]]
- [[trust-banks/smbc-trust-bank|SMBC Trust Bank]]
- [[trust-banks/nomura-trust-bank|Nomura Trust Bank]]
- [[trust-banks/custody-bank|Custody Bank of Japan]]
- [[banking/INDEX]]

## Sources

[^shintaku-profile]: 信託協会「協会概要」, https://www.shintaku-kyokai.or.jp/profile/
[^shintaku-members]: 信託協会「会員一覧」, https://www.shintaku-kyokai.or.jp/profile/member/
[^fsa-licensed]: FSA, "免許・許可・登録等を受けている事業者一覧", https://www.fsa.go.jp/menkyo/menkyo.html
[^fsa-trust]: FSA, "信託会社等に関する総合的な監督指針", https://www.fsa.go.jp/common/law/guide/trust/

---

> [!info] Confidence note
> confidence: **likely**. Dual membership perimeter (trust banks + trust companies), function buckets, and statutory backdrop sourced from the association's own profile / member pages plus FSA trust-business supervision guideline and trust-business operator registry as checked 2026-05-24. Specific aggregate trust-asset statistics drift quarterly and should be re-verified from the association's latest statistics release before quoting.