The Financial Services Agency and the Consumer Affairs Agency are set to hold a meeting of a new multiple-debt panel on Wednesday, October 28, from 14:00 to 15:45, according to an FSA notice dated October 27. The agenda is a review of the current state of multiple-debt countermeasures and policy developments, followed by an exchange of views. The notice lists no decision to be taken. The meeting runs at a government building in Tokyo and online by Webex; on-site observers are not admitted, and online registration has closed.
Why a new panel
The panel replaces a body that sat under a cabinet headquarters. That headquarters was created in 2006, with the financial services minister as its head, and last met in 2007. A cabinet decision of January 20, 2026 abolished it, along with other ministerial councils judged to have met their aims, as part of administrative streamlining. The FSA and Consumer Affairs Agency say the debt situation still calls for a standing forum, so they are convening the panel as successor to a 2012 expert group that held 23 meetings.
The scale of the problem
The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's briefing for the panel cites about 1.53 million people with three or more unsecured, unguaranteed loans as of the end of February 2026, drawn from credit-information statistics. The ministry says its groups of people at risk of hardship overlap.
Consultation trends point in different directions. Finance bureaus received 7,104 multiple-debt consultations in 2025, against 6,552 in 2024. Local governments logged 27,972, down from 29,429. National consumer-centre records show 24,120 in fiscal 2025, against 24,653 the year before. The Japan Financial Services Association reported 10,334 consultations in fiscal 2025, down 9.0%, but complaints about illegal lenders rose to 230 from 208, and in the first half of fiscal 2026 they reached 116 against 93 a year earlier, up 24.7%. The association says the shift in contact routes and methods needs watching.
On bank card loans, recourse claims held by 26 moneylenders that run card-loan guarantee business stood at ¥324.7bn at the end of fiscal 2025, up from ¥306.3bn a year earlier. The trade ministry reports that the Japan Credit Association's consumer desk took 3,718 card-related consultations in fiscal 2025, of which 39 concerned debts owed to several card companies.
The briefing also carries police-based data in which multiple debt is among the causes or motives recorded for 962 suicides in 2025, 5.0% of the total, up from 853 in 2024. Police records can list up to four causes per person.
Illegal lenders
The FSA reports 3,889 warnings to unregistered lenders soliciting person-to-person loans on X and Instagram, together with information passed to the social-media operators about accounts engaged in illegal activity. As of the end of September 2026, 3,543 accounts (91.1%) had been deleted or frozen. On September 11 the FSA issued a warning to an overseas unregistered lender operating through a website.
The National Police Agency cites a Yamagata case in which a group solicited loans by text message and lent to about 13,000 customers who applied, charging interest of roughly 2.7 to 189 times the legal rate and taking in about ¥300mn. It also cites a Tokyo police case involving a credit-card cash-conversion site that took in about ¥11.086bn.