Japanese banks received 514,602 applications from small and medium-sized borrowers to change loan terms between 1 April 2025 and the end of August 2026, according to the Financial Services Agency's latest cumulative table. The same table logs 497,152 executions and 6,878 declines, with 24,387 requests under review and 9,372 withdrawn. Those outcome columns include some applications received in March 2025 or earlier, so they are not a breakdown of the 514,602 applications.
The 98.6% figure in the table is not executions divided by all applications. The FSA calculates it as executions divided by executions plus declines, so requests under review or withdrawn fall outside it. It is an acceptance rate among decided requests, not a default measure, and the table gives no basis for reading a trend into it.
Regional banks, defined by the FSA as regional banks, second-tier regional banks and Saitama Resona Bank, took 448,691 of the SME applications and logged 434,018 executions. They declined 4,941, an acceptance rate of 98.9%. The nine major banks received 65,476 applications, executed 62,814 and declined 1,913, an acceptance rate of 97.0%. The remaining 77 institutions, including foreign bank branches, received 435 applications.
Counts are on a loan-claim basis. Because the outcome columns include some applications received in March 2025 or earlier, their sum does not match the application total.
For borrowers who are housing-loan holders, the same table shows 10,630 applications, 8,740 executions, 619 declines and a 93.4% rate. The agency posted the end-August data on 30 September 2026 on its page on responses to US tariff measures. The table does not say why borrowers applied.