Access to Remedies and Grievance Mechanisms

As part of efforts to develop an environment in which employees and others can work with confidence, the Resona Group maintains the Resona Group Legal Counsel Hotline and the Resona Group Compliance Hotline, both of which can be accessed by Group employees, ex-employees and their families via phone calls, e-mails, web forms and other means. These hotlines also accommodate anonymous reporting and are designed to give due consideration to protecting the identity of the whistleblower. The Resona Group Legal Counsel Hotline accepts reporting from external business partners.

To create an open-minded workplace environment, we have established the “Harassment Hotline.” To date, this hotline has not only received requests for consultation regarding various forms of workplace harassment but also responded to calls related to a broad range of topics, including interpersonal relationships at workplaces, career development, and workplace environments. We have handled each case in line with desires of those seeking consultation while giving due consideration to protecting their privacy as well as that of those around them in the course of our investigations and implementation of measures to resolve their concerns.

Furthermore, we conduct surveys targeting employees to periodically assess the degree of their trust in the above hotlines, with the objective of improving the perceived trustworthiness of various systems.

If human rights come to be negatively affected by products or services offered by the Resona Group, we shall implement proper procedures to offer relief to individuals whose human rights were affected. This also applies to any other case in which human rights are negatively affected via the involvement of Resona Group officers or employees. As part of these efforts, we have established a structure for reporting on and handling requests for consultation regarding human rights-related issues from a diverse range of stakeholders, including customers. Within this structure, we accept such reporting and requests through multilateral channels, including branch counters, sales staff, call centers and websites.

The Resona Group takes stakeholder opinions seriously and believes that doing so provides good opportunities for dialogue. We maintain a structure to ensure that any concerns raised by stakeholders are, according to their content, relayed to appropriate departments responsible for addressing human rights-related issues. This structure helps ensure that opinions voiced by stakeholders are utilized to improve our services and in-house structures. These opinions are also consolidated on a quarterly basis and reported to top management on a semi-annual basis.

Examples of Improvement Based on Customer Opinions

Based on opinions and other input from customers, we have improved our services and other aspects of operations as exemplified below.

• Prepared educational videos featuring specific customer reception cases. These videos were viewed by employees across the Group with the aim of improving their mode of accommodating elderly customers, people with disabilities and others who need support.
• Removed barriers from and otherwise renovated branch facilities after conducting on-site investigations in order to enable people with disabilities to freely gain access to our branches.