---
title: "Regional Banks Association of Japan (Zenchūgin-kyō / 全国地方銀行協会)"
aliases:
  - "financial-regulators/zenchugin-kyo"
  - "zenchugin-kyo"
  - "Zenchugin-kyo"
  - "Zenchūgin-kyō"
  - "Regional Banks Association of Japan"
  - "第一地銀協"
  - "全国地方銀行協会"
  - "Chiginkyo"
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, banking, regional-bank, SRO-adjacent, FSA, public-source]
status: active
sources:
  - "https://www.chiginkyo.or.jp/"
  - "https://www.chiginkyo.or.jp/app/profile/"
  - "https://www.chiginkyo.or.jp/app/profile/member/"
  - "https://www.fsa.go.jp/menkyo/menkyo.html"
  - "https://www.fsa.go.jp/common/law/guide/bank/"
---

# Regional Banks Association of Japan (Zenchūgin-kyō / 全国地方銀行協会)

## TL;DR

Zenchūgin-kyō (第一地銀協 in industry shorthand) is the industry body for Japan's "first-tier" regional banks — the chiho ginko lineage descended from former local zaibatsu / prefectural banks that joined the regional-bank track at post-war reorganization. Membership is around 60 banks covering most prefectures of Japan, with each bank typically the dominant lender in its home prefecture. It is a general incorporated association, not a regulator, sitting beside [[financial-regulators/zenginkyo|Zenginkyō]] in the bank industry-body stack.

## Wiki route

This entry sits under [[financial-regulators/INDEX|financial-regulators INDEX]]. Read it with [[financial-regulators/dai2-chigin-kyo|Second Association of Regional Banks]] for the second-tier (former mutual-bank) lineage, and with [[financial-regulators/zenginkyo|Japanese Bankers Association]] for cross-industry coordination. Statutory backdrop sits at [[financial-licenses/INDEX]] and [[financial-licenses/bank-license-and-baas-boundary]]; failure-resolution backstop is [[financial-regulators/yokin-hoken-kiko|Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan]]; the wider operator universe is in [[banking/INDEX]].

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

Zenchūgin-kyō is a general incorporated association (一般社団法人) of banks licensed under the Banking Act.[^chiginkyo-profile] It is not an FIEA self-regulatory organization, not an authorized Financial Instruments Firms Association on the FSA list,[^fsa-licensed] and not a statutory body. Member banks are commercial banks licensed and supervised by the FSA under the Banking Act supervision guideline,[^fsa-bank-guideline] which sets the actual regulatory perimeter for capital, conduct, and disclosure. Zenchūgin-kyō's authority is contractual / membership-based and works through committee resolutions, model rules, and shared infrastructure projects.

## Function / scope

Zenchūgin-kyō's published outline frames its work as:[^chiginkyo-profile]

1. **Research and policy input** — joint position papers on banking-law amendments, taxation, accounting, capital regulation, and regional-economy themes; submission of comments to the FSA, BOJ, METI, and Diet committees on behalf of the regional-bank constituency.
2. **Common operational infrastructure** — historically the regional-banks central computer-system cooperatives (the various 地銀系共同センター), shared payment-and-clearing operational standards complementing the [[financial-regulators/zenginkyo|Zenginkyō]] / Zengin-Net infrastructure, joint AML/CFT and customer-protection model frameworks.
3. **Member services and training** — staff training (especially for area-bound roles such as branch managers and relationship officers), legal-compliance reference material, and benchmarking surveys across member banks.
4. **Public communication** — the chiginkyo.or.jp portal, regional-economy publications, and joint statements on regional revitalization, sustainable finance, and SME finance themes.

The association's structural role is connective: regional banks are individually small relative to megabanks but collectively important to SME credit and local funds-flow, so Zenchūgin-kyō functions as their coordinated voice in central policy and as a shared back-office for industry-wide projects.

## Membership / governance

Membership is restricted to first-tier regional banks (旧 普通銀行 / 地方銀行 lineage).[^chiginkyo-members] Notable members on the published list include — among many others — [[regional-banks/yokohama-bank|Bank of Yokohama]], [[regional-banks/chiba-bank|Chiba Bank]], [[regional-banks/77-bank|77 Bank]], [[regional-banks/shizuoka-bank|Shizuoka Bank]], [[regional-banks/akita-bank|Akita Bank]], [[regional-banks/yamagata-bank|Yamagata Bank]], [[regional-banks/awa-bank|Awa Bank]], [[regional-banks/yamanashi-chuo-bank|Yamanashi Chuo Bank]], [[regional-banks/san-in-godo-bank|San-in Godo Bank]], [[regional-banks/chugoku-bank|Chugoku Bank]], [[regional-banks/shikoku-bank|Shikoku Bank]], [[regional-banks/saga-bank|Saga Bank]], and [[regional-banks/fukui-bank|Fukui Bank]]. Banks that originated in the mutual-bank track (相互銀行 → 普通銀行 transition in 1989-1992) typically belong to [[financial-regulators/dai2-chigin-kyo|Dai-ni Chigin-kyō]] instead.

Chairmanship rotates on a defined cycle among senior executives of major regional banks; the secretariat sits in Tokyo and operates standing committees in the same domains as [[financial-regulators/zenginkyo|Zenginkyō]] (legal, tax, accounting, IT, payments, international, AML/CFT) so member banks can plug into either organisation's deliverables.

## Related industry adjacency

In the regional banking lane, Zenchūgin-kyō is one of two parallel umbrellas — the other being [[financial-regulators/dai2-chigin-kyo|Second Association of Regional Banks]] for second-regional banks. Co-operative banking sits with [[financial-regulators/zenshin-kyo|Zenshin-kyō]] (shinkin) and the credit-cooperative central body (shinkumi). Cross-industry coordination on payments, AML/CFT, and ADR is handled jointly with [[financial-regulators/zenginkyo|JBA]] and the central Zengin-Net switch. Other industry peers in different verticals include [[financial-regulators/jsda|JSDA]] for securities and [[financial-regulators/seiho-kyokai|Life Insurance Association of Japan]] / [[financial-regulators/sonpo-kyokai|General Insurance Association of Japan]] for insurance.

On the entity side, member-bank pages already in this vault include [[regional-banks/yokohama-bank|Bank of Yokohama]], [[regional-banks/chiba-bank|Chiba Bank]], [[regional-banks/77-bank|77 Bank]], [[regional-banks/shizuoka-bank|Shizuoka Bank]], and the [[banking/INDEX|wider banking index]].

## Why this page matters

Regional-bank entries in this vault often refer to "first-tier vs second-tier regional bank" as a meaningful distinction without explaining the lineage. Zenchūgin-kyō is the public marker of the first-tier track. The association also provides the practical coordination surface for joint projects (BaaS, regional sustainable finance, SME credit data sharing, consortium IT systems) that individual regional-bank pages cite but rarely define. Linking back here disambiguates statements like "the regional-bank association recommended" — which usually means Zenchūgin-kyō, **not** [[financial-regulators/dai2-chigin-kyo|Dai-ni Chigin-kyō]] or [[financial-regulators/zenginkyo|JBA]].

## Related

- [[financial-regulators/INDEX|financial-regulators INDEX]]
- [[financial-regulators/zenginkyo|Japanese Bankers Association]]
- [[financial-regulators/dai2-chigin-kyo|Second Association of Regional Banks]]
- [[financial-regulators/zenshin-kyo|National Association of Shinkin Banks]]
- [[financial-regulators/shintaku-kyokai|Trust Companies Association of Japan]]
- [[financial-regulators/yokin-hoken-kiko|Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan]]
- [[financial-regulators/fsa|FSA]]
- [[financial-licenses/INDEX]]
- [[financial-licenses/bank-license-and-baas-boundary]]
- [[regional-banks/yokohama-bank|Bank of Yokohama]]
- [[regional-banks/chiba-bank|Chiba Bank]]
- [[regional-banks/shizuoka-bank|Shizuoka Bank]]
- [[banking/INDEX]]

## Sources

[^chiginkyo-profile]: 全国地方銀行協会「協会の概要」, https://www.chiginkyo.or.jp/app/profile/
[^chiginkyo-members]: 全国地方銀行協会「会員銀行一覧」, https://www.chiginkyo.or.jp/app/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-bank-guideline]: FSA, "主要行等向けの総合的な監督指針", https://www.fsa.go.jp/common/law/guide/bank/

---

> [!info] Confidence note
> confidence: **likely**. Lineage, membership perimeter, and function buckets sourced from Zenchūgin-kyō's official outline and member-list pages plus the FSA Banking Act supervisory framework, checked 2026-05-24. Member-count specifics should be re-verified against the live member-list page before quoting in a current-cycle analysis.