This is the announcement of the results of the second quarter. Here we have 50 people in the venue, and 130 people to 140 people are on the internet listening to us. Today, we have about 180 pages of the materials. Without further ado, let me start the presentation. The consolidated financial results of the first half. April 28, 2021, we came up with the new medium-term vision for three to five years. We announced this vision on April 28. In three to five years, we think that the full-fledged new digital age will start, and we think that we are living in a transitional period right now.
In this transitional period, during this period, we would like to achieve more than JPY 300 billion consolidated profit. Also, the total amount of profit before income tax expense for new business accounts for approximately 20% of consolidated profit before tax. The definition of new business is any business that utilizes innovative technologies such as digital assets or blockchain, and also any businesses that have become part of the group through M&A since April 2018. All in all, about 20%, more or less, it's just a yardstick number. As to ROE, 10% or more, we would like to sustain that level of ROE. In the first half, here are consolidated results. The sales revenue, JPY 334.283 billion , or up 46.5%.
Pre-tax profit, JPY 109.276 billion, or 100.5% up. Profit for the period, JPY 88.938 billion, or up 133%. Profit attributable to owners of the company, JPY 76.765 billion, or up 131.9%. As to the annualized ROE of the first half is 24.6%. It's a historical high. The average ROE of securities and commodity futures listed on TSE First Section is about 8%, or the 4.1% for the banking industry. This means that our ROE number is quite high compared to those averages.
As to M&As, during this first half, we did lots of M&As, and that contributed to the expansion of our business in various areas in the state-of-the-art areas, as I mentioned earlier, or the businesses with high potential of contribution to the whole group with significant synergy. Such companies have been acquired. The equity method companies, FVTPL, there are certain types, and we have been expanding this business helped by those acquired companies, and we will continue very aggressive M&A activities. Other than that, in the short-term small amount insurance area, we also did acquire some companies. Although it is not mentioned on this page, I will touch upon that later.
This is the profit attributable to owners of the company, JPY 76.765 billion. Daiwa Securities, there was a Nikkei article this morning, and they booked JPY 50.203 billion, up 53%. Ours was up 131.9%. Compared with the previous year, we already exceeded their results. Nomura and others, compared to them, we are doing better. For your reference, trends in the consolidated results of SBI Holdings and Shinsei Bank. The blue is SBI Holdings.
There was some drop in FY 2020, but already in the first half of FY 2021, we reached almost the yearly level of the previous year. As to the Shinsei Bank, the JPY 52.3 billion, JPY 45.5 billion, JPY 45.1 billion, JPY 38.8 billion. So there's a declining trend. As to ROE, SBI Holdings 11.9%, 8.3%, 16%, and 24.6%. While the Shinsei Bank booked 6%, 5.1%, 4.9%, and 4.2%. Now by segment, basically, both revenue and the profit for financial services business, asset management businesses, they had the record highs. As to biotechnology, healthcare, and medical informatics business booked record high revenue.
It's still the JPY 4,545 million, so it's still small, but it was record high. As to dividend, with the backdrop of good results, the JPY 30 as of the end of the first half of the year. In FY 2020, it was JPY 20. Now the business overview of COVID business and securities business. Average daily individual brokerage trading value year-on-year basis, April through September increased by 10.8%, so it's not so bad. Our operating revenue also increased by 10.8%, and with JPY 83.27 billion , and this is on the JGAAP basis of the first half. As to net operating revenue, JPY 77.253 billion .
Operating income JPY 27.584 billion, up 1.3%. Ordinary income JPY 27.684 billion, up 1.3%. Profit attributable to owners of the company, some decline, almost leveled with JPY 18.684 billion. This is the comparison with other major online securities companies. Already Rakuten Securities, Matsui Securities and au Kabucom Securities made announcements, and Monex is scheduled to make an announcement tomorrow or even delayed by one day. Not the 28th, but the 29th now. Please look at this table. Overwhelmingly, the profit level is changing. We all started about the same time using similar systems and online trading are the main businesses for all of us, all of these entities. There was a big difference now among these entities. I have said repeatedly about Neomobile Securities initiatives.
The elimination of trading fees for domestic stock transactions and other various fees that are currently incurred by investors. That is what we call Neomobile Securities initiative. Through that initiative, what will happen? I think that the number of accounts will increase to 30 million or so. 7.7 million is the current number of accounts, and I expect it to increase to 30 million. It's a big increase, and that is my hypothesis, one of the hypothesis. The number of accounts will increase significantly by eliminating trading fees for online domestic stock transactions. Even if brokerage commission declined, the increase in the customers and diversification of revenue sources will compensate for it.
Thirdly, growth in the number of accounts will lead to business expansion for various companies in the entire SBI Group ecosystem. The customers here will go to insurance and also the banking site services as well, so that they will become the customers of the SBI Group ecosystem once these customers get related to us. 32 million, more than 32 million customers we have. 7.7 million becoming 30 million. What will happen when that increase actually happens? That's what I'm thinking. I always verify my hypothesis. What kind of verification? I will show you. People aged 20 or under, and the number of new accounts at SBI Securities of this age bracket increased 88.6% year-on-year. Why 88.6%? That's a large increase.
For the whole group, it's 29.5%. Increase of the younger age bracket was 88.8%. People aged 26 or above increased 62.7%. For the younger people, the fees are actually practically zero. 7.7 million to 30 million accounts, that hypothesis that is backed by the number of customers and the fee levels, and we are checking that. What have we been doing? From September 2020, we eliminated certain commissions as shown here. Roughly speaking, with these initiatives, how much commissions were reduced? It's about JPY 2.78 billion. With this is the result, the sales or revenue did not decrease.
It's true, brokerage commission decreased. However, that was covered by other sources of revenue. Diversification of revenue sources is working in a very positive way. For example, for securities business, when the commission is zero on the online buying of the stocks, and then one wants to do the margin trading as well, and that will come with some commission. By changing the contents of portfolio, that we can increase our revenue. Without such increase, the JPY 19.612 billion would have produced JPY 22.3 billion, or up 2.8% contribution. The multiple number of sources of the profit more than offset brokerage commission decrease.
For example, underwriting offering commissions, sales commissions, up 159.3% year-over-year. Financial revenues and the margin trading expanded rapidly as open interest reached record high. Other commission received, the investment trust, for example, increased up 58.3% year-over-year. The stock trading commissions other than online trading up 13.8% year-over-year, and so forth. In a very steady manner, we are utilizing other sources of income, and we are covering the decrease in the brokerage commissions. The third hypothesis and its verification. Newly registered customers through measures that eliminated certain trading commissions use various services of the SBI Group. Numerically, we have not checked in detail, but I could say, I could tell that we are right because our ecosystem is designed that way.
All of the three hypotheses have been verified, have been justified. We can continue these hypotheses. One concern that I have is systems. Even a million, though, will be covered by the current systems, but I want the systems capable of covering 30 million accounts. Because I do not want to see our systems explode, that would be a big problem. Once we become very confident in our systems, maybe in one year or so, I think we can have systems that are strong enough, 12 months to 18 months.
We would like to work more on the elimination of the commissions, and we'd like to work on the new securities initiatives, expand product services, strengthen recurring revenue business, strengthen the wholesale business, expand trading revenue, and the stock trading commissions other than online trading. These five measures, we will work on them and others for the coming 12 months to 18 months. Here we have expansion of products and services to provide diverse trading opportunities. I will not go into details. Please read them if you are interested. For the shared point side or point side, that this is what I call the open alliances with various players, including T- Point, and newly we have Ponta Point. The number of users here is more than 100 million.
V Point with the SMBC, it's about 47.5 per million Sumitomo Mitsui Card members, and the number of members is increasing. This V Point can be converted to other points as well. That's one of the merits. We are promoting these three point systems aggressively. We need to be aware that the points are costs. We have to look closely how much cost. For example, Rakuten has the economic zone that they are using points to expand that zone. What is the profit that they are getting? I'd like to talk about that later as well. The recurring revenue type business that increases the credit business or increases financial revenue.
As to the accumulation of the points to buy the investment trusts, for example. Currently, the balance of that kind of trading is increasing. As to, we have the FOLIO, the subsidiary which is specialized in FEM investment and wrap management. We are going to start the SBI Wrap and the fund wrap from March 2022. This is the connection of the different services and the different functions to increase SBI customers.
As to wholesaler business, for the first half of the year, there were 60 listed companies, and our underwriting share is 100%. We are either the underwriter or the lead managers. Actually nine companies that we were involved as lead managers, not only for IPO, but we are also focusing on PO underwriting. The number of underwriting cases in the first half of 2021 increased 3x year- on- year. The corporate bond underwriting business is also increasing. 23 corporate bonds underwritten in the first half, and also the public bonds, including electric power bonds. They invite us nowadays to be part of such underwriting without us making approach because of the powerful sales capability of us.
SBI Money Plaza, that is penetrating into regional banks more and more, and jointly managed the stores that with 14 banks at 22 locations. That is also boosting our brand name, thus to expand our business. Now, the trading business, FX and the digital asset related business, up 28.8%, up 1.5% respectively. The VC Trade, TaoTao, B2C, the B2C2 rather, simply rounded up for digital asset related business. The initiatives to strengthen the digital asset business, expanding the line of digital assets, the VC Trade Pro, newly joined are Polkadot and Chainlink. Also for the other VC Trade sales counter, Odyssey sales counter.
In addition to these two, we also listed Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. $500 billion as the market cap. I have been saying that I would do whatever it's out there. That's not our intention. If we start with the small market cap, and if somebody takes the 51% of the stake from you, what would you do? We'd like to keep them with the minimum of $500 billion of the market cap. In December, VC Trade and TaoTao will merge. To produce SBI VC Trade, it will go into the type one financial instruments business and virtual currency exchange service provider.
The newly born SBI VC Trade will have these two licenses, and we are going to release many different services, and we have almost completed our preparation for that. As to foreign stock trading value, with the foreign stock trading value index for first half of fiscal year 2018 being one, first half of FY 2021 number increased to 5.3. The U.S. stocks is in the center.
We would like to meet the needs of face-to-face customer transactions, especially in the ISA business. We have been taking measures to reinforce this business. At SBI Securities, revenue grew 1.3 times year- over- year. It increased by 30%. Also, for SBI Securities, looking at the AUM trend for the ISA business, it reached JPY 2.1 trillion. Overwhelmingly in the ISA business, we have became number one as well. Also, for Money Plaza, I mentioned 14 stores with 22 locations. AUM as of July exceeded JPY 100 billion. It is currently at JPY 113.8 billion. For new face-to-face salespeople who are competent, we have been hiring them, training them, and at the co-managed shops, we have been allocating them.
Fortunately, at SMBC Nikko Securities, they have been allocating their people at 18 of the shops. This partnership from a personnel point of view has been helping the growth of the number of shops. We would like to also expand business into the real estate finance business. We have acquired 35% of Ascot Corp., and also acquired about 56% of total shares of Tosei Asset Management Company. We would like to do private placement REITs, and also we are engaging in selling real estate small lot trust beneficiary interest funds through Money Plaza. We are basically diversifying to engage in new business opportunities for the banking related business. For this business, as already announced on October the 8th, we have applied to be listed on the TSE.
After listing, we will operate its business with independence and strive for further growth at SBI Sumishin Net Bank. The meetings that I am engaged in, as of December, they will be concluded. After, the bank independently will be formulating its strategies. For the customers, they are going to have independence in the management of their operations. Of course, we will be the parent company, and if asked, we would like to do whatever we can with Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank. If it's a win-win outcome, we will work together. Having a relationship with a public company, this is what is supposed to happen, especially when it's a bank, because the FSA is extremely strict about these things.
To that end, back in 2007, we established this bank, and to date, we have continued to develop and grow this company so that we could now list the company. It's 50%. Therefore, the equity and earnings grew by 11.1% year-over-year and reached JPY 4,461 billion. We started operations in fiscal year 2007. We achieved a full year profit in fiscal year 2009. We have been continuing to grow the business, and then the BOJ started its negative interest rate policy, and profits fell at that point in time. We continued to grow income, and in fiscal year March 2021, we were able to grow ordinary income to exceed JPY 20 billion.
We have already exceeded last year's Q2 numbers, so we should be around here for this fiscal year. We achieved full year profit on a full year basis in the past, and then after, we basically steadily increased ordinary income apart from external impact. This is the outcome of how we have managed our bank. Since opening, here is a trend of number of accounts and balance of deposits. Now, the number of accounts has reached approximately 5 million, and for deposits, as of October 26th, it has reached JPY 6,659.1 billion. Even when NIRP by the BOJ was introduced, apart from that year, we have been seeing constant growth in a linear way.
Yokohama, Bank of Yokohama, Chiba Bank are the top two when it comes to the amount of deposits. We are here. As of the end of March 2021, we were number 17. Actually, no, Shinsei Bank was number 18. That's JPY 6.293.9 trillion. If you add it with Shinsei Bank's amount and compare it to Bank of Yokohama and Chiba Bank, we come in third. We will be in the top three from a deposits point of view. For SBI Sumishin Net Bank, the deposits exceeded six trillion. It was at JPY 6.628.4 trillion at SBI Sumishin Net Bank as of September. This is the growth we've been seeing from March last fiscal year until September this fiscal year. We are seeing steady growth.
This compares the deposit balances between SBI Sumishin Net Bank and Shinsei Bank. Like I mentioned earlier, from a ranking point of view, initially, in March 2020, we were ranking below Shinsei. In September 2020, we were also below Shinsei. However, as of end of March 2021, we exceeded, and we are probably going to exceed once again against Shinsei. We're growing by 11%, 10%, 16% as well as 15%, which is the most important factor. However, for Shinsei, it's the growth rates are only at 6.4%, 8.8%, and so forth. Now, for the sustainable growth of SBI Sumishin Net Bank, initiatives focus will be, for one, the mortgage business. It doesn't engage in loans to corporates. Therefore, what they're doing is collecting deposits.
They collect deposits, and they manage it. They generate spreads that turn into the income for the bank. They're putting emphasis on the mortgage loan business so that they could generate spreads. Of course, through investments, they are generating spreads from the securities related initiatives too. When you look at the balance of mortgage loans, starting from 2008, it has continued to grow. As of 2021, end of September, it has reached JPY 5,231.3 trillion. The cumulative total of housing loans exceeded, as of August the 6th, JPY 7 trillion. Just for your reference, for Shinsei Bank, from 2008 until to date, the loan balance has only hovered around the JPY 1 trillion mark.
Moreover, for our company, we would like to expand our customer base and enhance our profitability, and we have implemented new initiatives for that purpose, which is the NEOBANK initiatives. Finally, at this point in time, on a monthly basis, when it comes to account openings if you are benchmarking against April, as of September, it went up to 33.4. We have now JAL NEOBANK, as well as, T NEOBANK, which is a partnership with T Money, which is the T- Point operator, and Yamada NEOBANK, which is a partnership with Yamada Financial Service Company. Furthermore, with the Open House Group, excuse me, in linkage with OJ Link, we have started OJ Bank. By engaging in these initiatives, we will be able to have a diverse range of earning sources. It's basically our bank functions.
In this case, we provide it to Open House for their use. They will take advantage of our banking services in various ways, whether it be foreign-denominated currency deposits or loan products or something related to houses, paying utilities or internet fees. They may take advantage of all the services we offer, basically. For the insurance-related businesses, which is the SBI Insurance Group, on November the 10th, they will be announcing their results. On a JGAAP basis, the final numbers are going to be announced on November the 10th, and these are preliminary numbers. For ordinary revenue, we expect 7.8% growth and 51.4% ordinary profit growth. Profit attributable to the parent of the company has grown by 49.3%. In all of the items, the business is doing very well.
For the insurance groups, total number of in-force contracts comparing March 2016 to September 2021, CAGR has been 15.8%. People say that insurance is a saturated market, so it shouldn't be growing as much. However, in the case of our company, we have been able to record such CAGR, meaning that we're going after market share. When you look at the results of the questionnaire that the insurance company conducted during COVID-19, people had a tendency to review their insurance policies so that they could take out cheaper insurance policies. Seems that many people considered and a lot of people took action, and I was surprised to see the results of the questionnaire. Increasingly, this will be a tailwind for our business.
I touched upon this earlier, but basically it's not just organic growth that we're pursuing, but M&A is also an important part of our strategy to reach JPY 300 billion. This is something we will continue to work on. One of the pillars of the business is non-life insurance and life insurance, as well as a small-amount short-term insurance. For SSI, there are now five SSI companies that were incorporated into our group. We would like to continue to pursue M&A opportunities. For all of the companies in our group, customer satisfaction is one of the most important factors we focus on. If satisfaction goes down at one of our entities, I will personally go to the head of operations of that entity and ask why customer satisfaction has been deteriorating.
I will make a phone call because I put a lot of importance on it. For each of the companies, it is a key indicator that represents your performance. We are mostly first or second place, as you can see here. Also, when you look at the total amount of SSI insurance income, when you look at our performance in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, we finally in 2020 have been able to exceed Zenrosai Group and Tokio Marine Group, and we are now number one in the industry. We would like to continue to be so. For all of our group companies, we are striving to improve operating efficiency and engage in initiatives to expand the customer base. This constantly needs to be on our minds.
What kind of scheme should we put together to expand our customer base? Furthermore, under such schemes, will all the participants be happy? We need to create a scheme that will satisfy everyone. For management efficiency on the other side of the equation, we will ensure that we will continue to incorporate new technology. We make investments around the world because we want advanced technology, and incorporate that into our company. That's why we're making the investments, and where possible, we will continue to implement them, and we will continue to transform ourselves. This is self-transformation and self-evolution. We need to be like that as a person, and we need to be like that as an organization. If you're not able to do this, you will continue to subside.
Linking SBI Nihon SSI's insurance application system with the real estate company's application management system is what we're trying to work on, so that we can expand, enhance customer convenience, and also improve operational efficiency and expand the customer base. This is what we're trying to do. We would like to further improve operational efficiency and customer convenience by promoting InsurTech. For SBI Insurance, they did a major renewal of Kashikoi Speed Quote. For the non-life insurance, premium quotations, the necessary information can be automatically read and quotation can be displayed. At life insurance, it can completely automate reinsurance of life insurance premium deduction certificates. By using Alexa of Amazon, they launched a new service to estimate insurance premiums. In this way, we are incorporating technology to make our services even more convenient for our customers.
Next is the asset management business. For this business, most of the items are record highs. Revenue increased by 84.8%. Profit before income tax expenses grew by 221.1%. For SBI Savings Bank grew by 32.3% at JPY 18.4 billion. Also, the profit and loss from the change in fair value and profit and loss on sales of investment securities grew substantially by 248.1% to JPY 53.6 billion. In the initial phases, I was attentive to JASDAQ numbers. I forgot for a while, but now when you look at their numbers, the numbers are so different from ours. I talked about profit and loss from the change in fair value and profit and loss on sales of investment securities.
If you look at the details, it can be separated into listed and unlisted securities. For listed securities, it was negative. The reason for the negative numbers is because of Shinsei Bank. We own about 20% of their shares, and it includes a valuation loss that will be recorded at the end of the year. At Q1, there was a valuation loss of -JPY 14.2 billion. For Q2, we are currently in the process of a TOB. According to IFRS, we evaluate based on the previous day's closing price to the day the takeover bid was decided. The loss was about -JPY 200 million instead.
As you can see under number three, the reason for the valuation gains for the unlisted securities is because of Lancium in the U.S., which I will explain later, as well as DriveWealth, also based in the United States, which is an investment-related company. These two companies, as well as this was a valuation gain. Also, we were able to record a gain on the sale of Paidy because PayPal acquired it for JPY 300 billion, and we were a major shareholder. Of course, there were some unlisted stocks whose businesses have not progressed as expected. There were some businesses that didn't perform well because of the pandemic, and they needed to go through another round of funding and so forth. We took valuation losses worth about JPY 14 billion.
Of course, I hope this starts to settle down, as we have ended wave five of the pandemic. In the winter timeframe, there is cyclicality. We might see another peak after a trough. That's based off our past experience. Same thing applies for the flu. If wave six comes, we're not sure what's going to happen, but as management of the company, we need to be accounting for that as well. This time around, I think the situation is going to be somewhat different because of vaccinations. The vaccination rate is already at 70%, and probably the boosters will start from January next year. When we're in that kind of situation, I think we will be able to get infections under control, and we will get herd immunity once we exceed 70% in the vaccination rate.
Some people are saying that for when cells increase and expand, they expand in the wrong way, and the proliferation starts to change. Delta was really strong, but people are saying it's self-destructing and has become weaker. That's the self-destruction theory, like an apoptosis phenomenon. There are some experts around the world that are saying so. In any case, former Prime Minister Suga said vaccinations are critical, and it turned out that it's been justified. Thanks to him, we were able to conduct vaccinations in a speedy manner. Now 70% of the nation are vaccinated, which is worth noting. Next for the private equity business. In March 2022, we expect 34 to go to market and 12 for the half year realize an IPO or an M&A.
For these 12 companies last year, there were 12 for the full year. Now it's 12 for six months this fiscal year, and there's still 22 companies to go in the second half of the year. Because we created a JPY 30 billion fintech fund in December 2015 and an AI and blockchain fund in January 2018 worth JPY 60 billion. After, in April 2020, we created a JPY 10 billion fund, which was the greatest size ever in Japan. The investees are starting to go to market, and now we're entering a harvesting phase.
In fact, it is the financial service business, so asset management business. These are two wheels of a car, of a vehicle, which contribute significantly to the profit. In fact, this profitability is sustainable. I think that's what you can be said. Also, with regards to overseas financial service business, if you look at SBI Savings Bank in Korea, in comparison with the first three quarters of the previous year, it's +61%. In won basis, it's KRW 293.1 billion. In yen, it's not in yen, but it's about JPY 29.3 billion. According to the Korean ratings agency, it's now positive. Just one more step, and they will be able to pay out dividends, hopefully from next fiscal year. This bank was just about to collapse.
Then we came in in 2013 and spent about JPY 130 billion to buy this company. We were severely criticized. Look at the result. In just a short period of time, in 2015, we were already full year net profit, and we have been recording record high each year until today. In 2020 December, look at this. Just for your reference, look at Shinsei Bank's performance. SBI Savings Bank is just a non-consolidated basis, so we're now comparing Shinsei on a non-consolidated basis as well. In 2014 fiscal year, they were JPY 45.7 billion net income, and you can see they have been declining year- over- year. I might wonder, how could they continue to decline like this? What could they do wrong?
As I have been explaining from before, in our SBI group, there's no companies like that. The bank. I'm sorry, the companies that we invest in, which we have acquired and invested in, I would say almost all of them, their performances improve. Why would they not improve? What happens if they underperform? For example, maybe a group of young workers at Shinsei Bank and maybe, you know, ex-directors at the bank send me letters. They say, "Please buy the company, acquire the company, restore their past glory, change or transform the bank, please." They're the only company that have not paid down the public injections that they have received JPY 350 billion for twenty years. The management.
The fact that they are still getting paid bonuses, and of course they have to receive compensation, but it's quite unbelievable to me that they're getting directors compensation or bonuses. If you worked for a company like this, how could employees continue to be hopeful to have aspirations? The fact that the company you work for continues to grow, the group company that you work for is contributing to the parent profit. Those things become motivation, or it becomes your pride and it becomes your confidence, especially for the directors and executive officers. How, you know, what is this company that you cannot be proud of? Why is it? Because they don't have a clear vision and corporate philosophy. That's a mission. Companies that lack things like that turn out to see the underperformance.
This is my impression looking from the outside. We invested in Vietnam, TPBank. In 2018, they went public, and now they're about JPY 220 billion. We have 19.9%. FPT Securities broker-dealer, we have 19.9% in stake. Now their market cap is above JPY 40 billion. As the country continues to experience high growth, financial business will also grow. Same thing with Japan, right? In our high economic growth, it was the financial industries that grew first, and then was followed by manufacturing sector or transport sector. That's the structure. This is the financial institutions, it's the financial sector that really takes off in high growth market. Now, this is asset management business. Morningstar. Japan's asset management business has been growing very steadily as well.
This is because of the expansion in investment contracts from regional financial institutions, very large contributions from there. How much exactly are they entrusting us? Actually, the balance of AUM of the two companies, SBI Bond Investment Management and SBI Regional Revitalization Asset Management, together they surpassed JPY 2 trillion, well, JPY 2.2 trillion exactly. It's not just the eight banks with Capital Business Alliance with SBIH. Actually, they only comprise 35% of JPY 2 trillion. 65% are banks without any sort of Capital Business Alliances. 65% entrust us. SBI Asset Management Group, including that JPY 2 trillion, if you add everything else, the balance investment assets exceeded JPY 3.3 trillion. That's the amount of asset under management. In addition to that, in the asset management business, we have a core, important business, which is private equity business.
This is investing in non-public listed companies. I said earlier, we have 12 this year, and 22 is the last year's full year. What we have a great expectation for is the JPY 100 billion fund, the largest in Japan, which is SBI 4+5 Fund. These are the investments in Society 5.0 and Industry 4.0. It's wide range. The investment areas include different sectors. With regards to SDGs, we have been investing around the world at a very early stage, and we invest in environment as well. A lot of focus here. Earlier, I said that there's a foreign company which we sold, and we have had realized gains, and we also had some gains on sales, and Lancium is one of them. What does it do?
U.S. west part of U.S. is very much good for building wind power plants. What they do is they purchase electricity from wind farms at very low cost. It's clean energy, and they use it for hosting services at cryptocurrency mining or AI computing at universities. That's how it's done. They often say that mining consumes a lot of energy, but this is using clean energy. Whatever that used to use coal energy, it's converting to clean energy. 90% of the energy that's used is carbon neutral. Many of them are wind power energies. Through this we invest in companies like this. Also, even in Japan, there's a company called WIND-SMILE. It's wind power, solar power, biomass, geothermal investments.
We employ specialists from 12 different countries. It's quite advanced, somewhat unusual in Japan. They go from development to different types of power sources, and they go from installation to maintenance. Also ERI, Eco Research Institute. It's a system that develops recycled municipal waste. These are ordinary, general municipal waste, and they produce a biomass energy from that. What they do is they produce biomass-derived fuel from municipal waste through a pyrolysis of waste material and plastic mixed together by installing the system in local government cleaning centers. It is expected to reduce waste disposal cost. Hamamatsu city has already said that they want to implement the system. I went and visited the Chiba plant as well. These are the things that we want to invest in proactively, and this will become our core.
As part of the project, our regional revitalization partners, and with the services, they will continue to expand the business. Also SBI Energy, our subsidiary. They were doing a farming-type solar power generation. In other words, while they're farming, you know, they're always farming, like, crops, you know, soy and wheat, and they farm. At the same time, they manage farms, but they also supply energy. They generate and supply energy. It's quite profitable. We are actively investing in emerging countries through funds with leading local partners around the world. These are establishing venture funds with both private and public funds and invest around the world. We have information coming in from around the world. This is a new fund, new PE business in digital area.
This is the area we really are putting a lot of focuses on. For example, we're working with Sygnum. This is the world's first digital asset bank licensed by Swiss authority. Azimut is an Italian asset management company. We decided to establish a joint venture fund. We will be investing in different digital asset-related companies around the world, but mostly in Europe and also in African continent. I have traveled to more than 100 countries around the world, but Africa is the one continent I have not been able to visit, unfortunately. Now, of course, I have been to MENA, like Morocco and Tunisia. I have been to the northern part of Africa, but the rest of Africa I have not been able to visit.
This is the continent with potential, and so we have to start right away. We must start now. We have decided to partner with Verod-Kepple Africa Partners for investment in Africa. I have been talking about investment business so far, but now with regards to financial services business, I would say in Southeast Asia, we have joint ventures in most of the nations in Southeast Asia, and many of them are already profitable. Already, they have been recording profit, record high, basically achieving each year. Everywhere you look, they're growing. This is what I've been saying from before.
In high growth rate areas or in the countries where they're in the high growth period, it's the financial services that's really growing because the backdrop to is that the banking business, the financial institutions will also become profitable in the backdrop of that. The challenge here is to invest early so that you can keep the cost down. We have started early as well, SBI Savings Bank. Now, the non-performing rate is 1.51%. It used to be 51.6% in delinquency rate. This is when we purchased the company. Now, the management of this company was no good. He was a fool. Banking business, in principle, should not go bankrupt. The law, the banking, they're protected by banking laws.
You know, they're gathering money from small companies, and so they can't go bankrupt, so they can't fail. That is why the country, the government will inject public funds, for example. I think that the government of Japan, BOJ as well, have been too easy. Maybe it's good temporary. Maybe they had to help out the local entities or companies. Banks, they lend money, and they take interest, they charge interest. That's the key how they run their business. The fact that they borrow money and can't pay back, that's not possible. That can't be the case. Maybe one, two, three years, they can be patient. Maybe maximum five years, they can be patient. You know, they can't pay back 10 decades, 10 years, 20 years. How could it be a bank? It's not possible. We are...
What we think, what we're doing is justice. One reason is because they're not paying back the money they borrowed. People say that the government will only buy back at JPY 7,000 per share. They say, "No way. How could that be the case? That's not possible to pay back." No, I completely refuse that, reject that. Because what happens is those who borrow money during the pandemic will never pay back. Even in the Capital Alliance, investees of SBI, I always say that you have to put utmost effort into paying back public funds. It's taxpayers' money. Of course, you have to pay back. I say to each president of the banks, and I say this very stringently, right? Mr. Morita, do you agree with me?
They come and visit me every time, and every time I see them, I say, "Please pay back the public funds as quickly as possible." If you borrowed it again, you have to pay back once. You can't reborrow or refinance. I think it's problematic to refinance unless you pay it back once. Of course, we will assist you as much as we can. That's what I tell the presidents. That's how, in one sense, you know, they're saying banking business is different. TOB or hostile takeover is not possible in banking industry. To start off, what is hostile or friendly? I think it's nonsense to use words like hostile or friendly. Whether it's hostile or not, it should not be determined by the management. It's the shareholders that determine whether this is hostile or not. As a new word, I want to say constructive TOB.
It's outdated to say hostile. If you're here with the newspaper company, if you're representing newspapers, media, don't use those words anymore in this capitalism. If you want to revitalize this capitalism market and as a method of making this country wealthier and prosper, we have to let those nonsense, stupid management exit. You have to get them out of this, drive them out. They talk about poison pill. Fine, go ahead and do it. Let's say they will pay more than JPY 2,000 . We're saying JPY 2,000 m aximum, and I already think I'm paying enough premium, and I don't plan to increase any more than that.
If there's a white knight who wants to buy higher than that, I say, "Fine." I said, "We will give it with you, wrapped with ribbons." Like I said earlier, for justice's sake, I think I have to show one example via model. In the Q1 financial results, I was asked, "Why do you find Shinsei so attractive you want to buy that company?" As you saw in your reference, there's nothing charming about the company that's attractive about the company that makes you want to buy it. My answer is valuation. That's one reason. The other is because we think we can transform the company, the bank, Shinsei. I am confident that we can transform the Shinsei. That's what I say.
Russian bank, this was about to collapse, and we acquired it, and we have 97.4%. They have become profitable for the full year. Well, I guess only half year still, but in first half of 2021, they have already achieved profitability. You can see the gross profit. They can achieve net profit. You can see the loan balance increasing as well. Unfortunately, the signing of the Japan-Russia peace treaty seems far away. Putting that aside, we're private sector, so I believe that we should be maintaining relationship with Russia. That's my judgment. Of course, hopefully, this will be positive to, you know, political development. Of course, the Abe administration back at the time was pushing for business relations between Japan and Russia.
We decided that we will also bail out Russian bank. Hopefully, that will lead to the friendly relations between Japan and Russia. In that sense, RDIF, which is equivalent of JBIC of Japan, and also JBIC IG Partners itself has asked to invest. The Cambodian bank, we acquired a medium-sized microfinance company in Cambodia, and they obtained a full banking license immediately, and they became profitable right away. We can further grow them. Now, we started an online broker-dealer in Thailand. Compared to March 2019, 2020, excuse me, I think we should double the shares. Now, Africa, the last growth frontier, already new interesting businesses have started. SBI Africa, this is the company we established in SBI Motor Japan. It's a cross-border EC site and local sales.
In Kenya, Nairobi, we have an office called SBI Motor Japan. One problem with the business in Africa is remittance. If we deliver products, are we able to actually receive money promptly? You know, as a consideration for the product we deliver, can we receive that money back? I think that's the greatest concern we have with the business in Africa. I'm looking at being able to use Ripple's XRP to do the payment. Because the bank in Africa, we don't know what happens if there's a coup d'etat, for example. There's a lot of imaginable things that could happen, so we have to be cautious. Furthermore, Gulliver is a Japanese used car broker, and we used that company, and we are now working with SMG, which provide vehicles using microfinance.
For example, in Tunisia, an Uber driver doesn't have any money, doesn't have the ability to have an account, is not able to borrow money. If he can lease a car, then he can earn money. What we do is we lease the vehicle to the driver, and he pays back on a weekly basis. Asset management business. I think asset management business is quite promising. I said that we exceeded JPY 5 trillion. We want to be JPY 10 trillion as quickly as possible. I've been instructing that to my junior, and they say that they can do that. The reason is the sophistication and diversification of securities management at the regional financial institutions, and there's a demand to outsource that.
There's about JPY 132 trillion in the balance of managing securities regional financial institutions, among which yen bonds is JPY 83.9 trillion. Which means that when you say JPY 83.9 trillion , nearly 64% is yen bonds. On top of that, by 2022, about 40%, so that's about JPY 15 trillion of government bonds and local bonds held by regional financial institutions will be redeemed, which means that each year profitability will decline. Meanwhile, regional banks lack resources that is capable to deal with global asset allocation. If you look at deposit loan gap, so at JPY 116 trillion at regional banks, credit unions is at JPY 81 trillion, so together it's JPY 200 trillion in deposit to loan gap. If you look at this is all our potential market.
In fact, if you look at the yield, lending margin is 1.85%. This is exceeding the yield on securities.
is 1.18%. This is above the lending margin, so it's better to manage it on securities. Looking on the trend, it's all declining, and that's the key. That is why we need to continue to entrust from the regional financial institutions. Today, among 99 regional financial institutions, 58.6%, so 58 financial institutions are entrusting to us. 58, not eight. Capital business partnership, whether we have that partnership or not, it's required it. This JPY 5 trillion under balance, it's set to increase to JPY 10 trillion by the end of March 2026. For more than 20 years, I have acted and realized on my word. It's different from a certain bank.
With the expected profit that we like to fund our business. Now I'd like to move on to biotechnology, healthcare, and medical informatics business. This is going to be the last fiscal year. It will not be. There will be no big loss-making other companies. We will think about IPOs for SBI Biotech as well, and also five other related business companies. The potential IPO is always around there, even without the positive profit. It's becoming more viable about this business. Early profitability and sustainable contribution expected. As to the SBI ALA Premium, increased revenue 1.56x, and the pre-tax profit 1.2x .
The number of domestic stores, including Welcia, Tsuruha, Matsumotokiyoshi, 17,710. New products with the functional claims. We have the ALA Plus Mental Care, ALA Plus 5, ALAPlus 20, and also SBI Best NMN. NMN stands for the nicotinamide mononucleotide. This is the working for the energy metabolism of the mitochondria and longevity genes. At Washington University, I think it was Dr. Imai who has been studying this area, writing many papers. This NMN will be combined with 5-ALA going forward. This product is with NMN only. As to the todan alasia, we have todan-related product already.
Now we have the ALA Plus Todan Alasia using celastrol. It is made of trees in Sri Lanka, for example, and it was discovered by a Japanese person. They made the caps and so on using this wood in old days. It is good to avoid diabetes, for example. This Alasia that is used for this new product has already been approved by the Consumer Affairs Agency. ALA Plus Gold, the Hirōkan Keigen also, one of the seven products that with claims of functional claims. Also we have menopause improvement related product of fatigue reduction after exercising to be filed.
Here we have the phase II, the project II and preclinical II, and phase I, the I. This is for solid cancers, with licensing partner of Karuna Biosciences. Dr. Arai related to the University of Tokyo. I started the SBI Biotech with cooperation from that, the Dr. Arai. Autoimmune disease is the center of the other project. Allergy that is one example. The rheumatism that is another example. Ozempic and other anti-cancerous diseases exist for this area of diseases. We need to strike a good balance. Now, medical informatics. I now know very well that the medical data is missing. The...
We need to analyze medical data so that we can make decisions based on medical data, but in Japan, that part is missing. This company, Medical Data Vision, is a great company, and we purchased part of the stake long time ago, and we sold it and then bought it back again from FUJIFILM. It's worth doing that. Personal Health Record, or PHR, of each individual is very important. It shows the person's medical records and what kind of reaction to what kind of medication. Such personal record that is contained in Karuteko, which is PHR service, 30,000 people are already using it. When you get older, you don't remember all the diseases that you have had in the past.
For example, in the COVID era, when you have some existing diseases, you will get seriously impacted. What kind of disease will produce the serious impact? There's no data to show that in Japan. The 33.742 million patients' worth of medical data is held there. The share is 45% among all the high-performance hospitals using DPC system. I got interested and took some share, invested in the Medical Data Vision.
We would like to start the factoring service for medical institutions utilizing MDV's network, and combining that with SBI FinTech Solutions' financial expertise. As to health account, I talked with some policymakers of the LDP, and I talked with some banks as well to start this project. I argued that well, yes, we have the nursing care insurance, but it would not last forever, thinking about the current demographics of this country. How are we going to maintain the national health insurance? Well, we need the self-assistance, the mutual assistance, public assistance, as Mr. Suga said. Now, we need to have some medical insurance on our own, and deferred payment service is also important.
Using this health account, that is also possible. You don't need to line up in front of the reception counter at a hospital. It will also free up some time for the hospital admin because they don't need to work for the recovery or collection of the receivables. The medical insurance is also managed by this health account. Well, for this, we have a patent. In Gifu, the Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank takes the lead to do this project. That will be a big help for everyone. Now, SBI Group's new overall strategy. I design overall strategy, and then that is what that becomes the basis of the specific strategies of different businesses.
We try to achieve our goals on the same vector. This time, new overall strategy is expanding the customer base and creating a business foundation targeting corporate business customers. This is the background and the purpose. Let me read. Since its establishment, the group has been providing financial services mainly to individual customers using the internet as its main channel. With the promotion of the NEO Securities initiative at SBI Securities and initial public offering of SBI Sumishin Net Bank, the core bank of the SBI Group, it's necessary to develop a new banking strategy that includes corporate customers and further strengthen the corporate ecosystem. Relationships with regional financial institutions, which were the first step in the regional revitalization project, have been strengthened beyond expectations, and have dramatically expanded our business field and customer base.
In the future, the SBI Group will work together with regional financial institutions to revitalize the regional industrial foundation through measures such as providing support to regional companies through investment in supply chain finance, providing technology such as digital transformation and supply chain management, and helping regional companies expand their sales channels nationwide. SBI Group companies have built relations with large, medium, and small-sized businesses through their individual business activities. Now, we are going to provide various products and services, including non-financial services, and commonize group customers by creating big data based on the information of business corporations. In particular, we will develop a variety of new businesses centered on the diffusion of high-level technologies of venture companies with which the SBI Group has relationships.
This is the big strategy going forward, and group companies they will come up with their own strategies, and I am going to monitor all of these the specific strategies, including progress, which companies are doing well, which companies are not doing so well, and why. Everything should be done that way to make progress. If you just get together, and if you do not make any decisions, and if you do not act on your decisions, that will make a poorly managed company. I'm 70 years old, but almost everything is in my mind. More than anyone, I'm enthusiastic, and I'm thinking very enthusiastically. Any business executive or owner should be that way. Accomplishments and outlook of cooperation with financial businesses centered on regional financial institutions.
We have been working on sophistication of securities operations, adoption of fintech, and creation of new revenue streams, though in cooperation with SBI Group for regional FIs, for example. As to revamp of the core system, this is going to be the main theme going forward. Core system and all kinds of systems should be at a reasonable level, and the fixed cost should be changed to variable cost. I have been saying this for a long time, and it's time to realize it. It's a project which is already running. To work with regional banks to support the local economy and their customers, the development of cloud products, thematic business meetings, we have been holding many meetings and creating a place for local people together.
I cannot make a public announcement about this one, but we are in construction. At a certain location, it's not a park, but we are going to construct and build something to attract the people. The consultation on new business expansion, business succession. Here is cooperation with regional financial institutions that the SBI Group has promoted. For example, SBI Securities, a total of 45 regional financial institutions are allied with us. In November, the new intermediary system will start. This new type of intermediary scheme should be aggressively utilized. Money Plaza, the 14 regional FIs and 22 shops, the numbers are on the increase.
The SBI Life, 59 regional financial institutions are selling their products. SBI Insurance, SBI Neo Financial Services, SBI Business Solutions, and Morningstar, its tablet application, is a must for the regional FIs. When it comes to fiduciary duty, there are only a limited number of small products, and in alliance with the securities firms, you sell those small products. That's not the way to do business anymore. The fiduciary duty is about providing data and explain about the choices. Actually it is the third party, Morningstar, which is making it happen. That's why we have 147 regional institutions and the more than 38 institutions and seven banks. Within this year, it will increase to 20.
SBI Regional Revitalization Asset Management extended to 39, and AUM exceeded JPY 948.2 billion. SBI Remit services, they're already provided to seven banks. SBI Smile, that is about the real estate leaseback business. The consumers can continue to live in a house until their death. SBI Sumishin Net Bank, 5 regional financial institutions have already decided to adopt and offer those services related to the mortgage and so on. Here we have the comparison of core net business income among the regional banks. At Shimane Bank, we invested September 2019. This is the result of the other FY 2019. In the case of Shimane Bank, FY 2020, JPY 151 million.
FY 2021, they said JPY 101 million. But today, they upwardly revised the number to JPY 360 million of the ordinary profit. That is the revision of the forecast for the first half. We have Fukushima Bank, Chikuho Bank, and as to Shimizu Bank, they also did the upward revision of the forecast for the first half to JPY 3.1 billion from JPY 1.1 billion. Here is Kiyo Bank, Sendai Bank.
They did not change their forecast, but probably, once the revision is up, then you can refer to Nikkei newspaper, the front page of the, I mean, the one-page ad that will announce any revision of such forecast. The only way to make progress is the transformation of the quality. In Japan, overbanking situation is another fact that is part of it that will be wiped out if you do not do anything, whether it is financial the regional financial institution or any financial institution. Measures to be promoted, provided the TOB for Shinsei Bank that is successful. These are just examples.
We have already explained about this in the long text after the announcement of the TOB. It's already public information. SBI Securities and Shinsei Bank simultaneous opening of bank accounts and securities accounts or deposit linkage, the retail business will significantly increase. The retail business is not doing very well. It's shrinking rather at Shinsei. The small amount finance, Shinsei said that that's their strength. Once we do something, their small amount finance can be even stronger. The mutual supply of products for young customers. Increasing their customer base by mutually attracting younger customers creates revenue opportunities in the future life events of customers and contributes to longer-term profitability. Accumulation of data from both companies through cross-selling will increase the accuracy of credit decisions in marketing, contributing to cost reduction.
What about structured finance? Recently, I don't know, I'm not sure how much expertise they have for structured finance, because the experts in this area have left the bank, the probably young, the high-quality people who wrote to me, inviting me, to buy the bank, but some of them already left. In the past, they were strong in structured finance. If they still have good capability, then with regional FIs, or the business alliance, the with the regional FIs is much deeper and stronger. Market sales and treasury, there are 31 counterparties, that is the case of SBI Liquidity Market, that allows them to deal into very competitive rates. It's different from Shinsei Bank's operation on a small scale.
We can provide some other work to compare the two operations. Now, group-wide promotion of a corporate business strategy to further strengthen the corporate ecosystem. We will focus on the corporate business strategy going forward for the coming 12 months to 18 months. That will be one of the two wheels. With the new initiatives, the commission being zero on the internet transactions, and we can still make lots of profit as a group. SBI Securities will continue to be profitable, as I talked about the hypothesis and verification earlier. Expansion of business for corporate customers with regional financial institutions.
Only with the regional financial institutions that we ally with according to the Tokyo Shoko Research, 26,824 companies are the combined customer bases. The size is the next highest figure after the three megabanks and within a bank. We'd like to increase the number of the other customer base expanding the business, and that will be good for the regional banks as well as for us. For example, digital transformation support from us to them with the Machinowa as service provider, the shipments of regional currency premium coupons, the projects, and that is they deployed by many different the entities.
R3, Corda, the related system that will be utilized nationwide, so that the chamber of commerce, industries and others that will be involved more and more. For example, I'm thinking to use it for the Global Expo.
Another example of DX or digital transformation is. There is a company called Japan High Soft in Shimane Prefecture, a cloud-based attendance management solution. We're talking about jointly developing it. It's a company that has really good technology. In this way, we are engaging in this partnership, and we would like to expand the sales distribution nationwide. It's a benefit for High Soft as well as for Shimane Bank, as well as for us, and for the companies that implement this system. Realization of SBI DX database is what we'd like to also do. We have started to prepare. We would like to share it with the regional financial institutions so that SMEs as well as retail stores can take advantage of this database. We can help accelerate digital transformation and contribute to the revitalization of the local economy.
As the local businesses accelerate their DX journey. Next is business matching. We have a capital tie-up with Linkers. They have this interesting system. It's able to do matching and offer it to financial institutions. They have matching expertise, meaning matching something with something. Financial institution customers that are registered here can be linked together and be matched up. By doing so, our distribution channels can be expanded substantially or that given company, the technology base, can be enriched. Various things could happen. This will be a positive for regional financial institutions as well. Another thing is to promote matching support for universities. For university launch ventures by using Linkers and Astemius, which is a talent matching company. They possess a database of new businesses, new technologies, and products and investment information in 80 countries around the world.
They have data around researchers and so forth. We would like to apply this for university-launched ventures. Of course, we can apply to other entities too, and we'll be doing this together with Linkers. This is about a joint fund where we already have a Toho SBI Customer Support Fund that we have started. With Tsukuba Bank, we have been doing it as well. Tsukuba SBI Regional Revitalization Fund was established already, and a company called WARPSPACE Co., Ltd. has been invested into. This is a venture company that is seeking to realize the world's first intersatellite optical communication network service for low Earth orbit satellites. This is a University of Tsukuba launched venture company. Not just for companies, but the country is moving towards this direction, and these kinds of things are going to be required in the future.
As long as we are patent protected, I think interesting developments can be expected. In the bio space too, under the Tsukuba SBI Regional Revitalization Fund that was established in July 2021, there is a planned investment into a company called Veneno Technologies. It uses unique technologies to do drug discovery and promote the development of pharmaceuticals that were traditionally difficult to develop. I touched upon the Osaka Kansai Expo earlier. Together with Biocide Capital, we announced an announcement on October the 27th that for bio-related affairs in Japan, designing the future society for our lives is going to be the theme of the expo. It places a lot of importance on the bio arena. I'm saying two things about this. In the pavilion, collecting all the investees of SBI Investment can be set up.
Our investees will probably like that idea, and it will be good advertisements for them as well, good marketing for them. Also, various types of startups can be set up together, and it might be a good opportunity for people to identify new investment opportunities. We are striving to create an international financial center in Osaka, so we could set up an ecosystem. For the SBI Regional Business Succession Fund, the first of the series was at JPY 10.9 billion, and we have closed it as of June 30. We will have one and number two, and we'd like to reach JPY 100 billion. There are nine or 10 companies in fund number one, out of which eight are dispensing pharmacies.
They are situated in the various parts of Japan, but they may be family-owned, or they may be small in scale. If they are left alone, they will go out of business. What we're trying to do is we are acquiring these entities and integrating them into one. We, to date, we have made eight acquisitions, out of which, three have been exited from. Also in the rice space, the largest rice wholesaler, Shinmei Holdings, it was a customer of Shimizu Bank. Hamamatsu Beikoku, a client of Shimizu Bank, referred us to Shinmei Holdings. That is why we made the investment. We would like to collect all types of companies in this space under Shinmei Holdings instead of just buying the companies one by one.
We would like to reorganize the companies, grow its sales, and to exit from these deals, such as renovating and then bringing it over to Shinmei or making some changes in the pharmaceutical dispensary space. There's one more space I would like to become involved in, but it's a secret, so I'm not able to mention it right now. Also in Nagano Prefecture, there is a bedding manufacturer in which we made an investment, but we have already exited from it. We have been swiftly exiting from some deals. Even if we set up a JPY 10 billion fund, we are currently in a situation where we don't have to set up fund number two. But it will come to a tentative close, which means that we will need to set up fund number two.
Strengthening cooperation with corporations in each business area of the SBI Group is the next topic. For venture capital, the number of investee companies are 1,023 at this moment, out of which 177 of them exited through an IPO or through an M&A. We have a deep relationship with various types of entities. For investee startups, it's a matter of how we leverage them and even more. There are many companies that are starting CVC funds. Currently, there are 15 companies at a commitment of JPY 100 billion, and now it's JPY 105 billion because KDDI was newly added. They have decided to establish a KDDI Green Partners Fund in addressing climate change areas. They are highly interested, and many companies are moving towards that direction. CVC funds are starting to address these types of areas.
Currently, the commitment amount is JPY 105 billion. Through the securities underwriting business, SBI Securities is striving to strengthen relationships with business corporations. It's not just the IPO underwriting, but we would like to also address the secondary market and also M&A opportunities. These types of businesses are what we would like to expand. Strengthen M&A advisory. Benchmarking against first half of 2018 fiscal year, we are 12.7x larger or greater right now when it comes to revenue. For this space, another company actually bought an entity that we wanted to acquire, so this opportunity is gone. Also, internationally speaking, we are extremely interested. If any investment bankers are listening to this, I would appreciate your information for M&A boutique firms. That is of my interest right now. Now it's about shared point programs.
We're going to be working on that as well as NEOBANK initiatives, as well as in the securities business. There is a Takashimaya card. You're able to do investment trust savings. We have been working on various initiatives, and together with business corporations, we would like to continue to partner with them to develop this business. For the NEOBANK initiatives, we are seeing more initiatives happening. The number has been increasing when it comes to partner companies, and I'm sure they are likely to increase even further. In the banking sector, we would like to aggressively promote initiatives to further strengthen links with corporate customers, such as business matching as well as supply of technological expertise and so forth. For insurance group companies, they have connections with various companies too.
For example, SBI Resta, SSI, they have a relationship with electric service companies as well as building material sales companies for earthquake insurance. For Resta, they are in the earthquake liability insurance business. That's why they have a relationship with these types of corporations. They also have SSI for pet insurance as well. They have connections with various types of business corporations, which we would like to expand. Through the integration analysis of corporate client information, we'd like to promote the conversion of corporate clients into common customers. This is all about big data. For financial services, we have been building a database from an early stage, and we have been able to do some interesting analysis to date. That is why the SBI Group has been able to grow substantially.
For example, ALBERT, which we have a capital relationship with. In many ways, they have been developing data scientists, and the number of data scientists is the greatest in Japan, apparently. When it comes to data scientists, in the future, I am sure it's going to be an area that people are going to be paying a lot of attention to. Compared to the U.S., the number of data scientists are far greater in the U.S. compared to Japan. There's quite a lot in India, I believe. Japan, at Shiga University, I believe, they first started to say that they're going to develop data scientists by setting up a department. I'm sure there is now four or five universities. In any case, universities are belated in Japan.
In the U.S., universities are quick to react. The universities are trying to increase the number of students. That's what's happening in the U.S. I believe in Japan, universities need to have that kind of mentality and try to strategize how to grow the number of students. Example of initiatives to promote for business corporations if the TOB offer for Shinsei Bank succeeds. This is about business corporations. I talked about retail as well as financial institutions earlier. They have Showa Leasing. Towards our partners, their lease business can be developed. That's what we expect. Or cooperation in the principal transaction space. They are saying that we would like to become stronger in principal transactions amongst SMEs, meaning investment banking-like operations, as well as investing into startups, as well as supporting buyouts. Compared to the scale of our business, it's very small.
In the case of our company, when you think about it, in SBI Investment in March 2021, we sourced 2,350 companies. We conducted due diligence among 415 companies, and we made an investment into 78 companies. A build-up of these efforts led to the strength on a groupwide basis. It's not about just setting up this department and we're doing everything in that sole department. That doesn't make sense. SBI Group's progress towards establishing its business in the digital asset field is the next topic. NFTs or non-fungible tokens is the first area. We will be entering the space in a full-fledged manner. Just looking at Q3, it's JPY 1.1 trillion on a worldwide basis for the market. It is growing larger day by day.
It is basically a non-fungible token, which is unique and one of a kind. That's what it guarantees. In the areas of art, as well as game items and ticketing, people are saying that NFTs are suitable. For our company, we would like to commercialize on NFTs, and we're already at that stage. In September this year, Japan's first integrated NFT trading platform business, SmartApp, became a consolidated subsidiary of the SBI Group, and we changed its name to SBI NFT. For Ethereum, we focus on the NFT marketplace business that supports public chains, Ethereum. We aim to become a global leader in the distribution market available NFTs, such as domestic and overseas art and entertainment and tickets. Also, we have a company called SBI Art Auction. It's basically a company that engages in art auctions.
We could issue blockchain certificate, cert, to those who have made successful bids for artworks in partnership with Startbahn. In addition, we are able to record and browse information about works and artists online and use history and information and distribution channels after secondary distribution. The first in Japan NFT sale is scheduled to be held on October the 30th. For digital art, because it's digital, it can be easily copied. That is the uniqueness or characteristic of digital art. In order to assure that it is unique and one of a kind, we are able to do so through NFT. We are able to have a digital art business because we do it with NFT. I'm really looking forward to what kind of prices it can get. Next is security tokens.
We have led the way to establish a self-regulatory organization, and then the Amendment of Payment Services Act was passed. In October last year, as well as April this year, as well as in July this year, various types of ICOs are over these days. Now the days of STO are going to start. We are at the conceptual stage, and we are trying to verify. We are running proof of concept tests, and we have been running those tests through securities as well as bonds. Now we are trying to do asset-backed security tokens in the area of, with assets being property.
The first one is e-Sports. The capital raised through digital shares. Next is first STO in Japan. This is for retail investors in SMBC, Nomura, SMBC Nikko Securities, Nomura Securities. BOOSTRY will be utilized to do ibet for Fin. This is a DeFi platform. We will do asset-backed STO with Nomura Securities Mitsubishi UFJ. We use Progmat, offered by MUFG Trust, and we are also using ours as well. Progmat, the custodian is MUFG Trust. It's a very solid system. It's not saying the other is inferior because we invest in it. Now, this STO is expected to benefit all stakeholders, including insurers, investors, and regulators who expect to grow very rapidly. SBI Group needs to build various infrastructures for digital assets in Japan and overseas. We have ODX.
This is a private exchange which we plan to operate, and preparation is underway. Very progress. This is the shareholders' holding. We have 70%. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group is 20%, Nomura 5%, Daiwa Securities 5%. We're getting a lot of interest from overseas, and all of them are very well-known financial institutions. This is ST Research Consortium. The research have started in various places. Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation hosted with 62 member companies. However, secondary distribution will be done by our ODX. Also overseas, abroad, we together with SIX to do SBI Digital Markets. This is like a broker-dealer in Singapore. We will establish AsiaNext. This is Singapore-based digital exchange.
If the Japanese government decides to permit this, then we will build things like this in Osaka one after another. This is end-to-end global ecosystem, so we are looking at including custody, global custody. With regards to SBI Digital Markets, this is providing securities features for security tokens. Basically everything will be included in here. Again, we have invested in Börse Stuttgart in Germany, and we're able to do custody. As well, they are also investing in Blocknox, and we plan to invest there as well. We're looking at world's largest global corridors. Digital equals global, so it's not just about, you know, how it is in Japan. This is a very narrow-minded thinking. As long as we are just focused in Japan, we will never grow. I am thinking everything from global perspective.
This is digital asset fund. I've been saying this about establishing this from long before, but it's going to be a unique method that we will be using silent partnership to do digital asset fund. Meanwhile, SEC approves the Bitcoin futures ETF, so Bitcoin expected to rise furthermore. They were saying, you know, worries about China because of the regulation. But all of a sudden, with this news with SEC, it jumped up again, and this is because of institutional investors as well. I've been saying there's going to be a very big age of cryptocurrency. Virtual currencies will make a big, huge leap forward, as I've been saying with this. This is what I was saying, but you know what? It's moving, and it's really trending along a high level.
You should have bought it when it was cheap. Now price of XRP has risen significantly since it has been given as shareholders benefit. In 2020, March end. If you were given that benefit in 2020, March, and you sold it in October 25, you would've been. It's 125x . You know, it's actually a growth of 5.7x . DeFi, the ecosystem will be built one after another. We have about project team maybe 10 to 30 people increase in employees, and we have developed smartphone apps as well. It's all a matter of FSA.
If we are slow at this, then as you can see at the end of June in 2021, DeFi has grown to $27.7 trillion, nearly $28 trillion in terms of total value locked. The Bank of Japan Payment and Settlement Systems Department discloses a review on potential benefits, risks, issues, and risks with DeFi. This is April 2021. This is too late. Whether it's us or FSA, it's July. We couldn't wait. If it's, we have established our own SBI Financial and Economic Research Institute. We have invited Ms. Takako Masai, who is the former advisor to BOJ's policy board. She's now a representative director. She's gathering all the experts so that we can do policy recommendations. XRP International Remittance, again, this will be used in different areas, and we have started on an on-demand basis.
Entry into e-Sports related business, again, this is quite interesting, I think. There are four business areas titles. We have signed contract with 13 players, and I know that this will continue to grow rapidly. Everyone's serious.