Good morning. Thank you very much for attending our Investor Day event dispite tight schedule. Today, three division heads will talk about the growth strategies of each division after my presentation, and I will talk about the strategies for the growth of the entire group. What I want to speak about today is how Nomura will grow. We have positioned this year as an important year in which we will achieve even greater results than in the previous fiscal year, thanks in part to strong market support and the fruition of our past efforts. At a time like this, we must launch new initiatives that will lay the groundwork for the future and provide the next source of revenue. We cannot stand still. To this end, we have formulated a management vision for 2030 to achieve a stable ROE of 8%-10% plus.
We hope to achieve sustainable growth by clarifying the direction for 2030, including the group's business portfolio. Of course, we will not change expansion and enhancement of private areas in addition to public areas, which has been our strategy since I assumed the position of Group CEO. While we will steadily grow and expand businesses that generate stable revenue and capital-light businesses, the Wholesale Division, which is the largest user of capital resources, will aim for self-sustained growth based on what we call self-funding. We will use spare capacity generated from these initiatives to invest in new growth areas such as the IM Division and the banking business to expand our top line. As you can see on the second and third pages of this slide, it has been a year of increased interest in the Japanese market.
The result for the fiscal year ended March 2024, announced on the 26th of last month, was JPY 1,562 billion, up 17% from the previous year. Income before income taxes was JPY 273.9 billion, up 83%, and ROE was 5.1%. Revenue and profit increased in all three divisions. In addition, the trend of performance has been going upward. Although some believe that the impact of the market environment, particularly the strong Japanese stock market, has been a major favorable factor this fiscal year's results, we recognize that the numerous measures we have taken so far have borne steady fruit. Since the fiscal year ended March 2016, the Wealth Management has achieved its best financial results in eight years in order to provide products and services tailored to the client's situation and individual needs. We have made efforts by segment and reassigned personnel.
In addition, as an effort to convey the attractiveness of Japanese companies and stocks after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Content Company, which was newly established in July 2020, resumed its approach to overseas investors with the concept of Revisit Japan in March 2022. A total of 44 researchers visited 18 countries, regions, and 34 cities around the world and held more than 1,000 one-on-one meetings. As a result, the Japanese execution business has the highest revenue in 10 years. The shift to stock-based business through asset management is also steadily progressing compared to 8 years ago. Our recurring revenue has almost doubled, while we have reduced divisions' expense by nearly 10%, resulting in a significant change in our business model, with recurring revenue cost coverage ratio improving from 28% at that time to 60% in the fourth quarter of the previous fiscal year.
Our efforts to expand and strengthen our private domain as a product have yielded many results. We believe that there will be no future growth in the asset management business without our commitment to alternative and private assets. On the contrary, leading the way in this field is a major advantage. In the Investment Management Division, three years after the establishment in April 2021, the balance of assets under alternative management has increased three times to JPY 1.9 trillion. In the previous fiscal year, we saw the investment strategies for buyout investments to unlisted companies as a private placement fund for investment in private assets, utilizing the J-Ships stock exchange system for special investors, which was the first initiative in the financial industry in Japan.
We also use the framework of the program to support IB-managed startup fundraising and provide our clients with opportunities to invest in unlisted Equities and private Equities. These examples are the result of cross-divisional and cross-entity cooperation. We believe that new business opportunities exist between existing divisions, and cooperation among divisions will produce business results. So far, we have focused on the three business areas shown on this slide. These are areas that belong to the capital-light or stable business. In other words, I think it can be a business that is not influenced too much by the market. Currently, the ratio of these businesses to the total revenue of the three segments has increased to about 50%. Now, I think the interest of the participants today is whether we can continue these strong results or expand it further. Of course, I am not satisfied with the current situation.
From here, I would like to talk about the Nomura Group's future growth strategy. In April this year, Nomura Group established our purpose. We aspire to create a better world by harnessing the power of financial markets. In formulating the purpose, we considered the following three factors: What kind of world do we believe has value, and in what area should we conduct business, and what role do we play? The field we play in is not only securities and direct finance, but also finance and capital markets broadly. Finance is the blood of the economy, and the role of financial institutions is to support this cycle. In order to realize a prosperous society, we will work together to realize the aspirations of all stakeholders, including our customers, that is, the desire to improve and change for the better.
We believe that the improvement of our corporate value and the sustainable growth of society as a whole are on the same path. Rather than being biased on one way or the other, as a result of the business we engage in, we contribute to resolving social issues and generate revenue at the same time. This creates continuity and enables our employees to take pride in their work. Based on the newly created purpose, we have set reaching for sustainable growth as our management vision for 2030. We believe it is important to drive the quantitative and qualitative growth of the markets in which we operate and to enhance our contact with all stakeholders in order to do so. Our numerical targets are achieving a stable ROE of 8%-10% or more, and achieving a profit before tax of more than JPY 500 billion toward 2030.
To this end, we will continue our expansion and enhancement of private areas in addition to public areas, and focus our management efforts on global strategies that take advantage of Japanese franchises, rapid growth in stable earnings, and promotion of our platform strategy towards top-line growth. Wealth Management Division aims to achieve further growth by promoting the asset management business that we have been strategically pursuing. To this end, we will continue to expand our overwhelming base in the high net worth market. In the IM Division, we will expand AUM, upgrade investment capabilities, and increase added value. We will also continue to focus on expanding alternative investment strategies and opportunities in the wholesale segment. We will expand earnings by further advancing stability, growth, and diversification. In particular, Global Markets, which have a highly volatile business, can now expect to improve earnings steadily.
Stability as a department by appropriately combining product mix or products with low correlation. By building an appropriate business portfolio, risk can be reduced. In addition to the growth strategies for each of these business sectors, we will work to achieve this goal by improving our revenue and expense structure and resource efficiency through cross-divisional collaboration, finding and investing in new growth areas, providing value based on social issues, top-line growth through these sustainable cost control, and effective capital allocation. In terms of the structure of our business portfolio, we are imagining the growth of each business as shown in this slide. We aim to realize rapid growth in ROE and pretax profit by continuously expanding both capital-light business with low capital burden and revenues from capital-intensive business with high capital burden.
Stable business, which consists of recurring revenue from the Wealth Management Division, business revenue from the investment management division, and revenue from Nomura Trust and Banking, is expected to increase in both revenue and financial resources compared to the current situation. Going forward, we will expand our profit level, the balance of assets under management, and stable income, and consider additional capital investment in our inorganic strategy. In the Wholesale Division, we anticipate business growth and a decrease in the ratio of financial resources used. Going forward, we will achieve self-sustained growth while ensuring financial discipline. Are such seemingly contradictory things possible? Some of you may have thought that strategy or key word for achieving this is self-funding. Specifically, the Wholesale Division will expand businesses and enter into new businesses by reallocating financial resources within the division in principle.
You might think that this may become a drag on business expansion or end up leading to a shrinking business, but it's completely the opposite. By being aware of the ROE of each business, we will be able to operate and invest more efficiently. There will be an incentive to divert resources from less profitable businesses to more profitable businesses, and the decision will be speedier, especially because we need to self-fund resources within the division to continue businesses with low profit margins. This, together with the effects of the product mix, will lead to the completion and advancement of Nomura's wholesale business model. Self-funding allows us to channel financial resources within the Wholesale Division to expand our investments into other growth areas, including inorganic. In fact, over the last 10 years, we have conducted a review of our business primarily overseas wholesale.
The idea here has been to invest firmly where we need to invest and strive for growth, but also to be disciplined, including exit criteria. We will further accelerate this movement by thoroughly utilizing financial resources based on self-funding within the group. We believe that cross-divisional cooperation is essential not only for the development of new revenue sources, but also for the expansion of existing businesses. For example, businesses that cater to the high-net-worth individuals in Japan. The challenge for future revenue growth is how to increase the number of high-net-worth clients. Our ongoing strategic alliances with regional financial institutions have been steadily yielding results. In fact, we have been able to reach clients who we couldn't access before as we had only one branch in those, in some prefectures. This provides growth opportunities for both our partner financial institutions and Nomura.
In addition, the workplace business is typical of the B2B2C that Nomura is based at: startup entrepreneurs who have conducted IPOs and their employees, executives of publicly traded companies, and high net worth individuals who now hold large amounts of financial assets have come from such workplace business. In fact, overseas financial institutions have accelerated their efforts to secure emerging wealth people early on. Emerging wealth refers to a clients segment of startup managers and their employees who are potentially likely to become wealthy, although their assets have not been cashed, for example, through stock options. In this fiscal year, Wealth Management Division and Investment Banking will work on a common KPI on how quickly to incorporate future wealthy people into Nomura business. Wholesale Division is always thinking about offerings for International Wealth Management clients as well as high net worth individuals in Japan.
This may go in the other direction. The important thing is for us to take an approach from both sides. When I talk to the heads of financial institutions that are expanding globally, I feel that the model of combining wealth management and asset management has become mainstream. It seems that firms that do both seem to find opportunities to win. It is not that we will do it right away, but we will be able to collaborate more and more within the group to add value and increase the group premium. We would like to expand our business horizons in order to provide high, highly high added value to our customers rather than thinking in terms of regions, entities, Nomura Securities, and Nomura Asset Management, not to mention divisions. Banking and lending functions are important in business with a wealthy amid rising interest rates.
We will strengthen our banking business. Nomura Trust and Banking celebrated its 30-year anniversary last October. The amount of outstanding loans has increased by about three times in the past five years, and the size of the loans has also grown significantly. In a world with interest rates, Nomura Trust and Banking, which is responsible for the banking functions of the group, is very important strategically, including expanding and strengthening the business of the wealthy. In addition, in February this year, Nomura Trust and Banking became the first firm in Japan that adopted a single-party calculation of net asset value of publicly offered investment trusts. In addition to the existing three divisions, we will strengthen cooperation within the group so that banking becomes the fourth division. We will also strengthen our management structure and expand our business so that we can grow as an independent bank.
We are considering India and the Middle East as new geographical directions and future investment destinations. With a population of more than 1.4 billion, India overtakes China as the world's most populous country, and the population is expected to continue growing, rising to nearly 1.7 billion by the 2060s. Today, we have more than 4,000 employees in India, the second largest base after Japan. With over 15 years of onshore history, we have a full-service platform in the Wholesale Division. In fact, since 2017, we have been second in the IPO league table in India. While we will continue to build on our Investment Banking platform, we can also expect to see opportunities to expand our wealth management business with an increase of high net worth individuals. In addition to our onshore base in India, we are also seeing steady growth in our offshore India-related businesses and revenues.
For example, as of the end of March 2024, the net assets of the India-related funds managed by Nomura Asset Management exceeded JPY 1 trillion, doubling over the past five years when we combined stocks and bonds. Going forward, we aim to expand India-related business while strengthening cooperation among divisions. In the Middle East, IWM opened its international wealth management, opened its Dubai office in December 2022. In August 2023, Laser Digital, the group's digital asset subsidiary, obtained an operating license from Dubai's crypto asset regulatory body and is working to earn revenue. According to a survey, 2% of the portfolio of ultra-wealthy individuals with assets of $30 million or more also are crypto assets. In addition, in October last year, Laser Digital established a base in Japan to strengthen cooperation with the Nomura Group and develop business.
Wealthy people in Asia and the Middle East want to provide services to corporations while at the same time strengthening their relations with shareholders who are the main decision makers as well as managing their own assets. I would like to talk about the concept of the domestic platform strategy as one of our medium to long-term strategies. We have been providing financial services platforms mainly for financial instruments, intermediary services since 2021. We are a frontrunner in strategic alliances with regional financial institutions, and we have been steadily expanding the business. Going forward, we hope to become a comprehensive platform for the securities industry. Recently, there has been an increase in the number of requests from several financial institutions for middle and back-office services at Nomura when conducting securities business.
In other words, although financial institutions continue to retain human resources to maximize their top line, the burden of having middle and back-office services on their end, which is a non-competitive field in the securities and asset management industries, has become significant amid the progress of government's policy to build the nation based on financial services. By providing a platform to cover this issue from Nomura and charging for the use of the system, we expect both parties will be able to enjoy the benefits. We also believe that this platform can be made more value-added and indispensable by adding menus such as compliance, research reports, and employee training programs, in addition to business support. Another platform that we have is for the platform for asset managers. The government has announced the establishment of a Japanese version of the Emerging Managers Program to encourage new entrants of asset managers.
The biggest barrier to new entrants is said to be the middle to back-office work. The systems currently used by major asset managers are expensive, which creates a huge burden and barrier to entry. With regard to this part of the business, there have been inquiries of whether Nomura could take care of it, and we would like to show our leadership and create a platform that can be easily used by other firms. By enabling other companies to take advantage of Nomura's infrastructure capabilities as a group, we believe we can become a platform for securities and investment businesses in Japan. To realize this vision, we will develop systems and human resources within the group and work with other companies with a sense of speed. In April 2023, we established the Structural Reform Committee to eliminate long-held stereotypes and realize efficient business creation.
With respect to our cost reduction target of JPY 50 billion, by March 2025, we were able to achieve all of our planned measures by the end of March 2024. Going forward, we will promote further structural reforms to achieve our next target of JPY 62 billion in cost reduction as soon as possible. We believe that it is important to optimize the balance between the three areas: financial soundness, investment for growth, and shareholder return in order to achieve sustainable corporate value improvement.
With regard to our shareholder return policy, we will flexibly implement aggressive returns, including share repurchases with a dividend payout ratio of at least 40% and a total return ratio of at least 50%, including share repurchases. While adhering to investment discipline, we will constantly consider organic and inorganic investments to achieve sustainable growth and improve customer service, adding functions through M&A and expanding our customer bases options.
We recognize that our capital level is sufficient, even in light of the current uncertain market environment and the final Basel requirements. Going forward, we believe that by transforming our business portfolio into one capable of more sustainable growth and having a clear discipline in allocating resources to capital-intensive businesses, we will be able to secure additional growth investment and shareholder returns. Specifically, we will target a Tier 1 Capital Ratio of at least 11%. In addition, we assume the upper limit of that target range, and if we exceed that level in the long term and in a stable manner, we will proactively provide returns to shareholders while considering growth investment opportunities.
However, we would like to be aware that we would like you to be aware that the level of this upper limit may change depending on the results of the scrutiny of impact of the Basel III finalization. Finally, I would like to talk about the foundation for corporate value enhancement. Diversity is important in responding to changes in the new environment, and I am confident that diversity will strengthen Nomura. In addition to promoting young people, which is Nomura's tradition, we will utilize our diverse backgrounds and advanced expertise to enhance the group's corporate value. As you see in this slide, it is natural that the ratio of mid-career hires is high on a global basis. But in Nomura Securities alone, about half of employees currently have experience outside of Nomura. There is no difference in training, evaluation, or promotion, even if hiring styles are different.
Of the 18 new executives who took office in April, 5 started their careers outside of Nomura. Of course, simply having a diverse workforce does not revitalize an organization. I recognize that it is an important responsibility of management, including myself, to create an organization or to create an environment where everyone can be themselves and have an organization that naturally embraces diverse values and ideas. As of April this year, the ratio of female managers at Nomura Securities was 10.2%. We were able to achieve our target of 10% set for April 2025 ahead of schedule. In addition, since October last year, we have introduced incentives for employees who have taken more than one month of childcare leave regardless of gender.
At the same time, managers have incorporated efforts to improve the work environment that accepts diversity, encourage male employees to take childcare leave, and improve the abilities of female employees into their personnel evaluations. At the same time, we have incorporated efforts to promote understanding of diversity and fairness among all employees in our evaluations. As a result, the rate of male employees taking childcare leave has tripled, 53% in the second half of the fiscal year ending March 2024, compared to the first half of the same period. It was widely covered in the media, and customers have said that Nomura has changed, and I was very happy to hear that. In addition, we will create opportunities for all employees to discuss properly using the newly developed purpose.
Through this, we hope this improves mindset and engagement by having employees confirm the direction of the company's purpose and individual's purpose. In addition, the financial health of employees is an important element of well-being, with emphasis on human capital management, which maximizes the value of human resources to improve the corporate value over the medium to long term. Therefore, in February this year, we launched the Nomura Financial Wellness Program, a financial and economic education program for employees. We have a lot of advice to give to our customers, but quite a few of our employees put themselves in the back burner. When I looked at the questionnaire after the program was conducted, it was well received, and I think it was a very good program. Fostering and instilling a risk culture and promoting the sophistication of risk management systems will continue to be important management issues.
In pursuit of the sophistication of risk management, we recognize that in addition to strengthening our infrastructure, which includes specialized measurement technology and personnel awareness and action by each employee in the field, are extremely important. We have established a multi-layered risk management system called Three Lines of Defense based on the policy that all officers and employees actively engage in risk management. In addition, in addition, in order to foster a risk culture, we introduced ERCC rating, which is our professional ethics, risk management, compliance, and conduct for personnel evaluation in Japan in 2020, and expanded to all regions and the entire group the following year. In addition, since the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse, the term Recovery and Resolution Plan for Financial Institutions, RRP, and the term Resilience have attracted the attention of authorities of many countries.
Last year, we established the Resilience Office as a department that oversees our overall resilience, including RRP. Based on the comprehensive supervision guidelines for financial instruments business operators established by the Financial Services Agency, the cybersecurity framework of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and other overseas frameworks, we are promoting comprehensive group-wide initiatives. Our response, including wholesale and retail IT strategies and cybersecurity, is critical to running an efficient business and properly preparing for risk. In addition to Patrick Eldridge, CIO, we hired Isobel Tyson, Chief Information Security Officer, who has 25 years of experience at several financial institutions. We will steadily improve by assigning diverse and specialized members. Current movements and changes in financial and capital markets are very rapid and significant. We want to be more vigilant in carrying out our business.
We recognize that strengthening corporate governance is one of the most important issues in achieving our management goals. Since 2010, our board of directors has had non-Japanese outside directors. Currently, two-thirds are outside directors, one-third of directors are non-Japanese, and one and a quarter of our directors are female. We also participate in the 30% Club Japan, a global campaign aimed to increase the ratio of women. Since 2015, we have established the outside directors meeting where outside directors regularly discuss matters related to our business and corporate governance. In 2019, all three committees were chaired by outside directors to further enhance the governance structure. As the diversity of members of the outside directors has advanced, we have realized that the effectiveness of the board of directors has increased.
In the evaluation of the effectiveness of the board by an outside organization, we received a favorable rating in diversity in the composition of the board, in-depth knowledge and expertise of each director, appropriate business management, and active implementation of committee activities. Among the executive officers at Nomura Holdings and Nomura Securities, the ratio of women is 12.9%. Today, I would like to discuss our growth strategy for achieving a stable ROE of 8%-10%+ and the direction we are aiming for in 2030, including our business portfolio. Of course, we will not change our strategy of expansion and enhancement of private areas in addition to public areas, which has been our strategy since I assumed the position of Group CIO, CEO.
While we will steadily expand our stable revenue-generating and capital-light businesses, our Wholesale Division, which is the largest user of capital resources, will aim for autonomous growth based on self-funding. We will use spare capital or resources generated from these initiatives to invest in new growth areas such as the Investment Management Division and banking business to expand our top line. As for geography, we will work on the Middle East and India, which have enormous potential. In addition, we will leverage our existing infrastructure to balance a platform provider to become a platform provider for financial services. It is also fundamental in the group's purpose, but I believe it is Nomura's DNA to take on challenges that no one has done before. Great opportunities are now in front of Nomura. Attentions are paid to Japan, Japanese market.
All employees will continue to make further efforts to meet the expectations of all stakeholders, including shareholders and customers. Thank you very much for your continued support, and thank you for your attention. Next presenter is Mr. Sugiyama, Head of Wealth Management. Mr. Sugiyama, please.
I am Sugiyama, Head of Wealth Management. Now, I'd like to go into the material. First, I would like to tell you about the significance of the wealth management business that we aim to achieve. Now, in addition to the support of policies such as the Asset Income Doubling Plan, the buoyancy of the market in which the Nikkei, which is a record high in 34 years, has increased attention to investment to unprecedented levels.
On the other hand, in an environment where prices of goods have started to rise continuously, the ratio of investment in securities of Japanese households as a whole has yet to reach 20%, which poses a major challenge for hedging inflation and realizing the vision of building a nation based on asset management. I believe it is essential to foster a culture of taking appropriate risks while firmly managing assets. In addition, in an area of rapid change, client concerns about the assets are becoming more diverse. There is a need not only for securities trading but also for services that enable comprehensive asset management based on the unique circumstances of each individual.
Based upon this recognition of these issues, Wealth Management Division aims to create a society in which each client's goals can be achieved by firmly guiding assets to investment under appropriate management based on the needs of each client. These businesses are the embodiment of our purpose. We aspire to create a better world by harnessing the power of financial markets. As a leading securities company, we will contribute to the realization of a prosperous society through the virtuous cycle of growth and distribution, which we aim to achieve under the policy of building a nation based on asset management. Not just our financial assets. We believe that there is a huge potential of our wealth management business, which comprehensively considers companies and families that are considered important to clients as assets and supports their management.
The business we have nurtured in asset management, namely wealth management, is expanding significantly, and we named the division into Wealth Management Division in April this year. In order to match the division name with a business model, we will continue to pursue. At the same time, we also launched the brand Nomura Wealth Management. This is to demonstrate externally that we exist for clients who need to manage their assets, including asset management outside of the framework of the securities firms. By providing comprehensive asset management service, we believe that if we can achieve goals that each client aspires to achieve together, we will be able to expand our recurring assets through the maximization of assets interested to us. As a result, we will continue to grow sustainably with clients. This shows the current structure and future strategies for expanding the wealth management business.
In order to meet clients' needs and purchase services that satisfy clients, we need to enhance expertise as a unit dedicated to each client segment. Since fiscal 2019, we have developed segment-based business and segmenting. We have been segmenting them based on client needs. While we have approximately 5.5 million accounts with balance, we have approximately 600,000 accounts for corporate and high-net-worth clients, accounting for approximately JPY 130 trillion in clients' assets interested to us. As mentioned last year, concerns about assets of our clients, such as corporate owners and high-net-worth clients, are complex. There is a strong need for tailored services through people, and the number of these types of clients are increasing.
Therefore, we significantly increased the number of our sales partners in the last fiscal year with the aim of expanding the number of clients who we can provide asset management services to, regardless of whether they are new or existing clients. As an organization for corporate owners, high-net-worth clients, and their family accounts, we have set Wealth Management, Private Wealth Management, and Wealth Management domains with 500 and 4,200 partners, respectively. In addition, we have established the Workplace Domain, which targets executives and employees of mainly listed companies, and the Corporate Sales Division, which is in charge of institutional investors and various corporate clients. There are nearly 5 million accounts of mass affluent and mass retail clients, and these clients represent a client base that has a strong need for convenient services via digital.
In order to expand the investment base, we are developing mass marketing centered on the NISA and Call Department in order to establish solid contact with more clients. In addition, the Digital Client Service Department focusing on mass affluent clients provides hybrid services that combine people and digital. This service model is unique to Nomura in that it allows clients to collect information through digital channels and receive support from high-quality partners in important situations such as investment decisions. The four points shown on the right are the key points for medium- to long-term business under such a current framework. I will explain these points in more detail later. In terms of current business conditions, we achieved favorable results in the fiscal year ended March 2024, partly due to the favorable market conditions.
We aim to achieve our target of JPY 360 billion in revenue and JPY 95 billion in pre-tax income for the fiscal year ending March 2025. But we achieved this one year ahead of schedule, and we aim to exceed JPY 95 billion in PTI for the current fiscal year. Our KPIs have generally made good progress, although we did not reach our target for net increase in recurring assets. We have been able to make steady progress toward expansion of current assets under moderate selling pressure amid the historic boom. Since our outflow of dividends is an unavoidable net decline that occurs due to market appreciation, and the inclusion of the outflow dividends distribution poses a problem that we have been able to accurately report.
We have not been able to accurately report the status of our business, so we plan to report results excluding dividends distribution from fiscal year ending March 2025. The key point last year's performance includes the fact that we were able to expand our recurring business more than expected and that we were able to provide all products to meet client needs as a result of the large-scale segmentation and resource reallocation in a strong market for NISA scheme. Our sales partners, therefore, still provide thorough explanation and advice regarding carefully selected products lined up to the purpose purchase of a wide range of products. In addition, despite the increase in variable costs, the reduction in fixed costs through our cost and expenditure restriction project led to a significant improvement in profit margins in the last fiscal year.
As for targets to reduce costs by JPY 20 billion by March 2025, we have moved ahead of schedule and identified costs to reduce. We will continue to work on cost control to further improve profitability. Through the steady expansion of the recurring business and cost control, the recurring revenue cost coverage ratio improved to 55%. As a medium-term goal, we aim to achieve a recurring revenue expense coverage ratio of 80% for the fiscal year ending March 2031. To achieve this, we aim to expand our recurring asset to over JPY 35 trillion. We aim to expand and achieve our recurring assets by expanding our client base, introducing assets in custody, and improving performance through appropriate asset management services. Let me explain in detail our strategy for medium to long-term business expansion.
First, we will improve the value of Nomura's asset management service in order to activate high-net-worth clients' accounts and develop new clients in the high-net-worth market by capturing the growing trend of high-net-worth markets. As a strategy to achieve this, we will advance the evolution and expansion of product solutions. We have significant strengths, and we have the development capability to create new product solutions ourselves by combining the comprehensive capabilities of the group. We also receive requests for a wide variety of deals from supply-side companies around the world. This is because we have built trust through our overwhelming client base, our quality partners who can provide new and complex products with the right understanding of the clients through solid explanations, and our business model that provides a wide range of product solutions based on client needs.
As an example of this strength is the expansion of private asset last year. We are working on democratization as an asset class that contributes to improving the performance of our clients by increasing the diversification efficiency of our portfolio and pushing up the effective frontier. Taking advantage of Nomura's strengths, we will focus on further evolving and expanding our lineup. Next, let's take a look at upgrading services by partners. Last year, we increased the number of sales partners and adjusted the number of clients that our partners cover. In the wealth management area, the number of accounts that one partner is in charge of is much lower than before.
As a result of an increase in the number of partners, we made significant progress in the activation and new business development we were aiming for, and the number of active accounts for high-net-worth clients increased by 41% from the previous year, and the number of new accounts opened also increased by 51%. We believe that this was a result of the progress in behavior change as we secured resources for our partners. In order to secure resources for our partners, we will expand the provision of digital services. In addition to hiring new graduates, we will also focus on mid-career employment, including the reemployment of former Nomura employees. In order to efficiently invest the resources of our partners, we will continuously refine our client segment and use external data to enhance how we can address target clients leading to an efficient expansion of our client base.
In addition, we need to continuously attract the next generation of high-net-worth clients, namely emerging wealth clients, for long-term business expansion. There are three patterns shown in the left to roughly classify the attributes of emerging wealth clients. For A, we will continue to exploit this pattern by utilizing existing networks and external data. But for B and C, we have already secured our own pipeline. As for B, executives and employees of listed companies have a high probability of becoming wealthy. Workplace business provides services to these clients, and it is truly a pipeline unique to Nomura. Against the backdrop of the overwhelming share of the shareholding association, a path for account acquisition has been established. In fact, about 10% of our 600,000 high-net-worth clients have opened accounts through workplace services.
Now that we have improved our organizational structure and made our targeting even more clear, we are significantly expanding our business with retiring clients. As Okuda-san mentioned, we would like to take advantage of the high market share in lead underwriter status for Japan's listed companies and strengthening business to business in cooperation with IB, while strengthening Nomura's unique service in business to consumer services, thereby establishing a path to acquiring emerging wealth clients. With regard to C, the inheritance-related business is continuously expanding as we develop the asset management business for our future high-net-worth client base, and many of our clients already deal with us as a whole family. In order to maintain and expand the client base over the medium to long term, we will strengthen our approach to the families of high-net-worth clients. Next, we will establish a sustainable service delivery system using digital technology.
We are making progress in building a business model that delivers service in a hybrid digital and partner structure to meet customers' needs. There was a concern that clients who have traditionally been provided with face-to-face services through partners may stop doing business with Nomura. But in reality, clients' activity has not decreased, and thus we believe that we are able to provide services more in line with clients' needs. And the number of logins into apps on which digital services are based has nearly tripled from a year ago, and client contact has been greatly enhanced. In order to expand our investment base, we will continue to develop a system that can deliver services to many clients. Finally, I would like to introduce alliances as an important strategy in terms of diversifying business models.
It's been more than three years since the launch of the alliance with San-in Godo Bank and Awa Bank, and both client assets and recurring revenue assets increased by approximately 30% from the end of March 2022, exceeding the growth rate of the company as a whole. The total number of new accounts opened through the alliance, including Oita Bank and Fukui Bank, has exceeded 60,000 accounts. In addition, business related to solutions such as inheritance has grown exponentially. This is an excellent business model that is consistent with the direction Nomura is aiming for. And if there are financial institutions that share the philosophy of revitalizing the regional economy, we will seek to expand such alliances. I rushed through my presentation, but that concludes my presentation. Thank you very much.
Next, we would like to call upon Mr. Sugiyama, Head of Investment Management. Sugiyama-san, please go ahead.
Good morning. The Investment Management Division provides a solution to the diverse investment needs of a wide range of investors through products and services that comprise a variety of asset classes ranging from traditional to alternative assets. Today, I would like to explain the medium and long-term strategy of the IM division. First, I would like to look back on last fiscal year and our initiatives for the current fiscal year. Last year, in addition to strong market conditions, there were inflows into a wide range of products, lifting AUM to a new record high and business revenue, a stable income source steadily increased. In addition, investment gains doubled from the previous year. In the current year, we aim to achieve the KGI of JPY 63 billion, which we presented last year by expanding AUM and growing business revenue through higher value added.
KPIs have been revised upward for both AUM and net inflows. The mission for our IM division is to realize a virtuous cycle of investment that leads to solutions to social issues by providing high-quality investment products that meet the diverse investment needs of clients, based on which we will contribute to the achievement of group purpose. In order to realize our new management vision, reaching for sustainable growth, which Mr. Okuda, Group CEO, announced today in the IM division, we have set three growth themes: solutions capturing opportunities in Japan to capture the growing domestic needs, creation of global value to compete globally, and new growth in collaboration with global stakeholders to create new value for the future. Through the pursuit of these three growth themes, we will provide high-quality value-added services and increase our visibility in Japan and overseas.
Here is our vision for the fiscal year ending March 2031. First, with regard to AUM, while increasing by approximately JPY 40 trillion from the current level of JPY 89 trillion, we envision an increase of the alternative ratio from the current 2% to approximately 9%. On the other hand, we would like to increase income before income taxes, mainly on alternatives, and aim for an overall profit of approximately JPY 100 billion, including inorganic growth. Next, I will explain the key points to become who we aim to be. The graph on the left shows the trend we have been following for the past 10 years, with annual average AUM on the horizontal axis and the management fees on the vertical axis. Although AUM has grown significantly, downward pressure on the management fees has continued, in part due to the intensifying competitive environment in the industry.
The industry assumes that downward pressure on the management fees will continue. In such an environment, we will focus on areas with higher value added and higher management fees while aiming to further expand our portfolio. To that end, we will promote initiatives in the areas of public, private, and new investments under the three themes I mentioned earlier. Now, I'd like to talk about the first theme, solutions capturing opportunities in Japan. First, NISA DC solution. The NISA DC market is an area of growth driven by a series of policies centered on the Government of Japan's Asset Income Doubling Plan, and expansion is expected to continue. NISA will provide products that contribute to the long-term asset formation of individual investors through a wide range of sales channels nationwide.
For growth investment, we will develop long-term funds with good track record, such as the Nomura Fund Wrap , which allows customers to choose courses according to investment style and purpose, and the My First NISA series for tsumitate investment. We will focus on expanding the investor base and expanding the balance by improving consulting literacy at sales companies and promoting through media. In defined contribution pension plans, Nomura Asset Management has the top share in the balance of dedicated funds. We will strengthen cooperation within the group and aim to gain more balance and share. Next, ETF solutions. We believe that ETFs have much room to expand as an asset management tool in Japan. Investors' Holdings of ETFs are increasing year by year, and their exposure to asset classes is diversifying.
Nomura Asset Management has been expanding its lineup, focusing on foreign stocks and bonds as a tool to invest in foreign markets in real time. We also listed active ETFs last year and currently have a total of 71 ETFs. In addition, we are increasing our efforts to improve the convenience of investing in products. For institutional investors, we will conduct marketing in cooperation with stock exchanges and other parties and take advantage of Nomura Asset Management and the group's client base. For individual investors, we will promote tie-ups with digital and online securities and media companies to attract a wider range of investors. We will also enhance alternative solutions. The balance of alternative assets under management has increased approximately five times since the end of fiscal year ended March 2020, and we aim to further increase this to a scale exceeding five times.
Taking advantage of the growing number of alternative investments by Japanese investors and an opportunity, we will provide solutions to a wide range of domestic investors by leveraging the strength of our gatekeeping business, which we have been engaged in for over 20 years. Furthermore, we will scale our in-house operations and expand our areas and products. We will further focus on the so-called democratization of private investments, which provide individual investors with opportunities to invest in private assets that were previously only accessible to some institutional investors. In February of this year, Nomura Asset Management announced the offering of Nomura Alternative Connect. This is a one-stop solution service that provides access to alternative investment products around the world. It provides access to funds provided by leading global alternative management companies that have become partners, enabling investors to build diverse portfolios according to their needs.
With regard to the democratization of private assets, this year we launched Japan's first publicly offered investment trust that invests in unlisted stocks around the world. We will expand these initiatives and broaden the scope of customers for private assets. In Japan, we recognize that there are attractive investment opportunities in private assets driven by domestic companies reviewing their balance sheets, startup support policies, and continued high business succession needs. We will scale our in-house asset management and aim to have more than JPY 800 billion in assets under management by fiscal year ending March 2031. We anticipate the launch of successor funds in the areas of private debt and private equity. Investment corporations that invest in unlisted stocks aim to list on the TSE Venture Funds Market. We position the expansion of domestic private businesses, including initiatives in the real asset area, as one of the drivers of growth.
Next, I would like to talk about the second theme, creation of global value. One of the pillars of our global strategy is to strengthen specialty Credit, which is an asset class that tends to generate excess revenue among active investments. We have a strong team in the management of high-yield bonds, Nomura Corporate Research and Asset Management, with more than 30 years of history in the United States, an outstanding track record, and assets under management of approximately $34.6 billion in assets under management, or JPY 5.2 trillion. We shall leverage this strength to enhance global recognition as a Credit operations specialist. Over the past two years, we have taken steps towards that goal. In the public domain, we've acquired external management teams for the management of corporate hybrid securities and emerging market corporate bonds, which have attracted funds from clients.
We also began commercializing private Credit operations in the United States. In March of this year, we launched a new brand, Nomura Capital Management, in the Americas and established a one-stop system for providing Credit products covering public and private. The second aspect of creating global value is the operational capabilities of Japan and Asia. We offer investment opportunities targeting Japan and Asia to global investors. The slide lists the foreign domiciled funds which we manage, but there are many other mandates for discretionary management. Some funds are highly appreciated by overseas evaluation organizations. We launched Project Bridge in March of 2022 to promote the attractiveness of Japanese stocks to investors around the world and have conveyed the strength of Japanese stocks to a total of more than 450 investors.
Nomura's global presence as an investment manager of assets in Japan and Asia will be leveraged to expand domestic private real estate products, private real asset products overseas, and enter the private sector in growing Asian countries. Finally, I'd like to talk about the theme of new growth in collaboration with global stakeholders. In this new area, we aim to expand our ability to provide high-quality investment products that help solve social issues. There are two specific initiatives. First, real assets. We are already working on aircraft leasing, real estate, and forest resources. Going forward, we will accelerate these existing initiatives while developing new real assets that will help solve social issues, such as plant factories and renewable energy. The second is research and development, R&D.
Over the past year, we have partnered strategically with the Angeleno Group, a venture capital firm that provides growth capital for next-generation clean energy, and we have invested in Teamshares, which supports small and medium-sized businesses in the United States. We will continue to accelerate strategic R&D investments to accumulate knowledge and use it as a leverage to commercialize our business ahead of other companies. Finally, with regards to opportunities for inorganic growth, we will continue to actively pursue opportunities not only in terms of business areas and valuations, but also by focusing on strategic and cultural factors so that the strength of our investment management business can be leveraged. That concludes my presentation on the strategies and initiatives of the IM division.
Under the three themes of solutions capturing opportunities, creation of global value, and new growth in collaboration with global stakeholders, we will aim to expand our portfolio of assets under management and increase the value added to achieve sustainable growth that satisfies our stakeholders. Thank you for your kind attention.
The next presentation will be delivered by Mr. Christopher Willcox, Head of Wholesale. Chris, please go ahead.
Hello, everyone. I'm Chris Willcox, the head of Wholesale. It's great to be back here in Tokyo today to talk to you. A year ago at this forum, I laid out a new strategy and direction for the Wholesale Division. I said that despite building many strengths and competitive advantages, our franchise was operating as less than the sum of its parts. I therefore identified three immediate and critical priorities: stability, lowering our Cost-Income Ratio and improving risk discipline. Growth, building critical mass in our core products. And diversification, accelerating our build-out in international wealth management and expanding adjacencies to existing capabilities. My message today is that the plan is working. Over the past 12 months, we have reduced costs, increased market share, and improved our bottom line. Moreover, this is a platform with momentum.
Over the course of the year, we've grown our client revenues, increased productivity, and upgraded our talent bench. Of course, this is a journey, not a conclusion, and there's still further for us to go. However, this is a business which now has a clear path ahead of it and a clear long-term goal, which is to achieve cross-cycle, stable economic returns in support of our group's overall ROE targets. From the outset, I want to answer the most fundamental question: What is the value of our wholesale platform? Why do clients choose Nomura? First and foremost, we are a market leader in Japan. Against a supportive backdrop, we have not only maintained top rankings across Fixed Income, Equities, and Investment Banking. We've actually increased our market share. Internationally, we are selective in the areas where we believe we can compete and differentiate our platform.
We add value through content, market access, structuring, and origination expertise. In areas such as AEJ Credit, US RMBS, or US equity derivatives, we punch above our weight, and we have established top five market positions. And third, we live up to our motto of connecting markets east to west. We provide unparalleled access to Japan and Asia markets from Macro trading through to research and cross-border M&A. And we have ramped up our distribution of product into and out of Japan in growth areas such as private markets. As a global platform, we are large enough to be relevant but nimble enough to operate across business boundaries, particularly through our advisory, financing, and solutions businesses. And finally, we are forward-looking, embracing our clients' sustainability needs in areas such as our green tech industrials and infrastructure business.
Adding all these elements together, our business is, in fact, more than the sum of its parts and represents a unique client proposition. Our strategy is predicated on getting the basics right, stabilizing the platform, and making steady, incremental gains. This has been borne out in our 2023/2024 financial performance. Revenues increased 12% year-on-year to JPY 866 billion despite a 6% decline in the market fee pool. And we saw revenue growth in each successive quarter supported by market share gains. Japan underpinned our growth story as our GM business took advantage of record volumes and soaring equity markets. Investment Banking Division achieved its highest revenues in nine years and secured top rankings across advisory, ECM, and DCM. International similarly posted a stronger year. In fact, over three-quarters of this year, our businesses grew year-on-year against a backdrop of shrinking fee pools.
Equities, Securitized Products, and Credit improved throughout the year. While Macro products faced more challenging markets as client activity remained muted and amidst continuing inflationary and interest rate concerns, nevertheless, our core franchise remained strong, and we were awarded interest rate derivative House of the Year for Europe and Asia. Finally, our international wealth management business achieved a record $21 billion of AUM. So stepping back, we've made strong progress in each of the three core tenets of our strategy. On stability, we have exceeded our core target by over 50% and improved risk discipline, registering only 1% of lost days over the last fiscal year. On growth, we saw an 8% increase in client revenues in our Global Markets business, 21% growth in international Investment Banking revenues, while our domestic wholesale business in Japan surged 27% year-on-year.
On diversification, we achieved $5.5 billion net new money in our international wealth platform with over 500 new accounts opened. Looking ahead, our priority is to stick to the plan, consolidate the progress we've made, and monetize the platform that we have built. As you can see, we have made progress on each of our KPIs in 2023/2024 and posted an overall 80% growth in pre-tax income at JPY 54 billion. We are now fully focused on at least doubling this level and aiming towards JPY 130 billion in pre-tax earnings this fiscal year. In the short term, we expect Fixed Income to drive our continued improvement in earnings as we see recovery in the rates in FX markets. In Equities, we will continue to expand in EMEA and AEJ, and in IB, we expect growth to be led by the international advisory business.
Importantly, over 90% of overall growth will come from our international franchise. Although we anticipate improved performance, we will still maintain strict cost discipline and limit reinvestment to only the highest priority product and technology initiatives. In terms of KPIs, we expect to achieve our revenue over RWA target and exceed our fee and commission revenue goal. Our cost-income ratio remains key. We are targeting a ratio of 86% in 2024/2025, but in the medium term, our priority is to lower this ratio towards 80%. So now let me walk you through the building blocks of our forward plan. Starting with stability, a key principle of our new strategic plan is to increase revenues while maintaining discipline and risk management. The graph on the left showing our daily revenue distribution over the past year perfectly tells this story. Our growth has not come from outsized P&L days.
Instead, our revenues are more concentrated above our break-even point of $22 million per day, and we aim to increase our daily run rate by a further 8% in 2024/2025. On costs, we have taken action across markets and banking while streamlining our model, reducing inefficiencies and duplication. We've been aggressive both in terms of underperforming headcount and non-personnel expense, such as market data and third-party vendors. The combined actions have surpassed the $150 million target that we set out last year, and we're on track to deliver more than $250 million of saves by next year. These efforts in aggregate will allow us to reduce our baseline costs and improve our bottom line. In the long term, we see further potential for saves by streamlining technology costs and by executing our location strategy.
When we met last year, I was acutely aware of the weak profitability and returns in our international platform. Since then, I'm pleased to say that we've seen a continued recovery in performance, although there is still further to go. On the left, we graph our major businesses in Wholesale and their level of contribution, or revenues minus direct costs, for each quarter of last year. We can see from Q1 to Q4 the number of businesses generating higher contribution has increased by 25%. This is a result of strong client market share gains and improved risk management. In GM, we have continued to focus on deepening our client share. As you can see on the top right chart, our businesses' improved performance is highly correlated to client revenues.
In Investment Banking, our MD productivity in international advisory has almost doubled in the last 5 years, and we aim to build on this progress in the year ahead. Moving towards the next pillar of our strategic plan, growth, strengthening our client franchise is essential to achieve meaningful scale. It is the bedrock of stable and sustainable earnings. Across Wholesale, our efforts are concentrated in our priority client lists, which represent a significant proportion of our revenues. Increasing revenues with this segment is the most impactful and efficient way to lift our overall performance. In GM, we've achieved cumulative growth of over 35% in the past 4 years, and 2 factors have contributed to this growth story. Firstly, we've been successful in delivering more of the firm to our top clients through our multi-product offering.
Secondly, we are generating more revenues, over 20%, from new products, particularly in our financing businesses. In Investment Banking, our priority client revenues have grown 40% over the same period, and we are steadily increasing our wallet share with our top clients, as high as 10% for key focus relationships. Looking beyond 2024/25, we have robust plans in each of our businesses to continue this growth trajectory. In Japan, we already have market-leading shares. Our goal is to defend and improve on this position. Investor demand, coupled with structural changes in Japan's economy and corporate structure, will yield further opportunities over the next few years. Globally, we're steadily increasing our client share and forensically identifying gaps where we can deepen our penetration, particularly with the real money and corporate segments.
From a product lens, we will continue to scale our existing businesses while also expanding into white spaces in adjacent regions and products. In Securitized Products, we are successfully replicating our U.S. franchise strengths in other regions, and we've seen a 30% increase in revenues this year. Similarly, in equity products, we've leveraged our strengths in the U.S. and Japan to achieve 20% growth this year. In Investment Banking, we will continue to strengthen our advisory business and core sector coverage, including Nomura Greentech, consumer retail, and sponsors. To support these ambitions, it is imperative to invest in the right talent. This, in turn, will lead to higher productivity. We've hired over 50 senior leaders across new businesses in Global Markets, which importantly have been largely self-funded. In Investment Banking, we're focused on increasing productivity.
International MD productivity increased 25% year-over-year, and we aim to drive this level higher. Coming to the third pillar, diversification. It is essential to our long-term goal to increase earnings stability, particularly in fee-generating businesses with low resource intensity. This has been a pivotal year for our international wealth management franchise. We added around $6 billion of AUM, and we increased revenues by nearly 50%. The franchise is closely integrated with the rest of wholesale, and cross-referrals have grown 1.6 times since 2020. We are also successfully expanding our franchise, particularly into North Asia and Dubai. You have already heard a lot today about our 2030 ambitions. For wholesale, I see this as the culmination of all the plans that I have laid out here today. There are no moonshot ideas. We are sticking to the strategy. So what is our goal?
Put simply, we aim to generate sustainable, long-term returns through a diversified global platform. We will target 8%-10% ROE through the cycle and a cost-income ratio of around 80% through both cost and resource efficiency. Within markets and banking, we will rebalance towards lower volatility, higher return businesses, while also strengthening our client share and increasing cross-sell across the platform. Continuing our growth trajectory, our ambition is to break into the top 15 wealth managers in Asia and target $60 billion in AUM. This, in turn, will push our fee and commission revenue towards $1.9 billion in the longer term. Growth plans, of course, require resources. However, our plan is to self-fund these growth targets by reinvesting a proportion of the retained earnings generated by wholesale each year. As we look ahead, therefore, ROE optimization is just as important as core earnings growth.
A key priority for wholesale is to shift our business mix towards more resource-light areas that consume less of the firm's capital. We expect to see at least a 5% shift in our portfolio towards businesses such as international wealth management, advisory, Spread Products, and Equities. This does not mean that we are deprioritizing our other businesses, such as Macro and execution services. However, as a proportion, we aim to grow our lower volatility asset classes at a faster rate and therefore rebalance our overall business mix. To conclude, we have made considerable progress this year on each of the goals that we set out last year, despite much more challenging market conditions. We now have a clear plan to achieve our medium-term goals.
The building blocks are unchanged: stability through risk discipline, cost management, and resource efficiency; growth in our core markets and products; and continued diversification internationally in wealth management and in expanding our client base across products and geographies. This is the plan we are now executing, and I am confident we are on the right track towards sustainable growth and profitability. And with that, I would like to thank you for your time and attention today. Thank you.
The first question is by SMBC Nikko Securities. Muraki-san, please go ahead.
Muraki of SMBC Nikko, I have two questions: capital policy and wealth management. On capital policy, I would like to ask for a few numerics. Page 22 of Okuda-san's presentation, target range. You'll be studying that. Thank you very much. The upper bound of the range, 13%, is that about the right level? Is that the right understanding? What's the timeline by when will you be setting the range? In addition, capital cost ratio versus exiting business areas, what is your thinking behind the threshold hurdle rate? So that's my question number one regarding numerics.
Muraki-san, thank you very much. Let me give the response with regards to the major concept behind. If you guess from the diagram, it may appear to be around 13%, but we're still scrutinizing the appropriate level. FRTB impact, and Forex is volatile, so that impact is also being evaluated. And acquisition, M&A, where we want to see growth, and not set one, but Tier 1, and total capital ratio. So we have to think comprehensively, taking into consideration other regulatory requirements as well. At this juncture, we've not been able to give you specific numerics, but at an appropriate timeline in the future, we hope to give you more information.
The top management is currently considering these matters as very major and important points. Going to your second question, capital cost. 8% or slightly above. Most recently, our performance has increased in volatility, so cost of capital is increasing.
The main theme of the presentation is sustainable growth. If this could be achieved, we will have room to reduce cost of capital. What would be the hurdle rate to decide exit from certain businesses? What's the hurdle rate?
Again, we have to look at the whole of the portfolio. I believe that's the only way to make decisions. For example, Wholesale is a capital-intensive business. Generation of products or liquidity provision, those factors taken into consideration, this is the kind of business we have to secure presence. Our business is not done through product-by-product in an isolated manner. There is interconnectedness in each of these products and services, and even between business lines. So by deciphering the variety of impacts, we may decide to exit, and we may decide to enter new business areas. If Chris wishes to add some comments, please go ahead, Chris.
No, I think you covered it. I think it's very clear what the task is over the next few years. Obviously, the timing of some of the decisions that we make is going to be based upon market opportunities as well.
Thank you very much. I was talking about page 9 of your presentation, long-term ROE goal. I thought this was rather modest, 8%-9%, and for 6 years, you are assuming there will hardly be any growth in ROE. But wholesale ROE, even by assuming tax rate of 15%, it's 7%-8% on the long term. So that would probably be a major factor in the long-term ROE. Using a hurdle rate in making the investment decisions, does that mean that hurdle rate for wholesale you currently apply for wholesale will be phased up? Not this year, but after the next fiscal year, up to fiscal year 2030, will you be changing the way you do things?
For the 3 segments as a whole, if you look at ROE alone, wholesale ROE or RW, well, it's a capital-intensive business. So ROE being low is a fact of the business we are engaged in, but it's not that we are satisfied with the current level. We're not just sitting complacently. How do we uplift the ROE of wholesale?
That's one reason we've introduced the concept of self-funding. And as Chris mentioned in his presentation, we will also elevate top-line while managing cost. So we are taking steps in order to uplift the wholesale ROE, and we will introduce more stringent discipline. And that is the pillar of the current plan.
Thank you very much. Second question is wealth, page 10 of Sugiyama-san's presentation. ESOP, you had great share to begin with, but you hadn't been able to leverage the potential. What had been the reason behind? Maybe Japanese companies not introducing fully stock-option-based remunerations. So was it just an external factor?
And I think this is partly related to Wholesale, but the importance of workplace business was not well communicated to international business, not being factored into compensation.
And KPI, number of accounts is there, but 2030, what can we expect in terms of KPI for fiscal year 2030 in terms of increase of net asset? Thank you very much.
This is Sugiyama speaking, and I'll answer to the workplace-related question. Frankly speaking, we hadn't been able to allocate resources. The difficulty of this area is the working generation and ESOP participants are there, but when they own asset is close to when they reach retirement age. So it's a long-term business. In other words, the pathway to injection of resources is long. But with the improvement of digital technology, I'm not sure whether you know, but Nomura App has this function of getting information regarding ESOP. There's ESOP Web.
It used to be a separate standalone app, and they had to enter through their own ESOP app. But now you can use Nomura App to access the ESOP page, and the user can get information on his or her asset in ESOP and his or her asset in Nomura. And depending on the equity prices factored in names or results of those companies that have been factored in, you can obtain information regarding those points. And after one subscribes to ESOP, it took years for them to begin to invest. But digitalization and digital technology has been one solution in solving this issue. And the other point is upstream and downstream. We've defined the functions, and the downstream business efficiency has significantly improved. Two years ago, ESOP originated opening of accounts. 60,000 was the average. Last year, it increased to 130,000.
So with the establishment of the infrastructure and offering of app, the ESOP-related number of accounts has doubled. So by continuing with these policies, we hope to increase assets inflow from these sources. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
The next person asking the question is from Daiwa Securities. Mr. Watanabe, please go ahead.
Thank you. I'm Watanabe from Daiwa. I have two questions. First, regarding capital strategy. This time, page 11 of Mr. Okuda's presentation in Wholesale, self-funding is going to be used for the autonomous or self-sustained growth. But what's a remittance to the Holdings? So among the divisions, is there a difference? So JPY 100 billion of a buyback, it seems to be within that. But in 2024, is there opportunity for additional limit for buyback to be established? So that's my first question regarding capital policy.
Watanabe-san, thank you very much. What did you mean? Remittance of total interest? I didn't understand your question.
So for each division, the cash is generated, and that cash is remitted or sent to the Holdings. So percentage of profit that's sent to NHI. So that remittance rate, is there a difference among divisions? For example, for wholesale self-funding, so capital is generated by them, then that means a percentage of profit sent to NHI. If it's too excessive, then wholesale cannot grow. So that's a question to that effect.
Okay. The concept is for each division, there's no difference. So each business lines PTI that they generate. So more than 50%, that's the return ratio. So more than 50% is sent back to Nomura Holdings. So it is not that wholesale has a special rate of return to Holdings. And your second question is regarding buyback. So about JPY 75 billion of buyback has been completed. So if things go smoothly from here, then before the earnings release for the first quarter, the buyback will be completed. At least every year, shareholder return has been conducted aggressively. So based upon that situation of progress, the new limit for the buyback will be considered. So in that sense, yes, I am not ruling out the possibility of additional buyback.
Thank you very much. So the second question is regarding Wholesale, page 7, product strategy. In the past, you focused on carefully selected areas to improve efficiency in the past. And this time, the white space is going to be filled in the new direction. But as a result, is there a concern that the profitability will come down? At the Investment Forum end of last year, Wholesale run rate JPY 5.1 billion was set as a cost. But is that run rate level going to go up in the future? That's my second question. Thank you.
So the first question, the strategy is that we're not launching new businesses. What we're doing is taking areas where we have existing expertise and strength and expanding them either into client sets that we have not fully penetrated or into regions where we haven't deployed that expertise. So, for example, we have been taking our AEJ Credit capabilities and looking at opportunities in the Middle East and Central Europe. The same applies to our equity derivatives capabilities, which are very strong in the U.S. We have been investing in those capabilities in AEJ and in Europe. And we see those areas as areas of growth and increased profitability, not decreased profitability.
So I think, and alongside that, in addition to those being growth opportunities where we don't have to spend a lot of investment money because we already have the existing systems and expertise and risk management capabilities, but they also serve to diversify the business. And in particular, in EMEA, the investments that we're making in taking Securitized Products and equity capabilities and deploying them into EMEA should make our EMEA platform more stable and more profitable. So our view would be more profitable. The second question, I didn't quite get. Can you remind me what the second question was?
So the Wholesale's run rate cost. So compared to before, is the run rate cost going to go up in the future or come down in the years ahead?
Understood. The run rate cost, obviously, we have both direct and indirect costs. As you can see, what we've been doing over the last year is we've been cutting our direct costs, but we've been using the resource that's freed up by that to make investments in our platform. Almost all of our headcount hiring has been self-funded. You can see in our headcount numbers that our headcount is actually more or less flat year-on-year. It's marginally lower. Over the next few years, it's also expected to remain relatively flat, maybe marginally higher over the next five years. At the same time, as we said in the presentation, we have hired 500 people into our wholesale business over the last year. There's been very significant talent upgrades.
So in that sense, while we are making very significant cost reductions, we're using those cost reductions to invest heavily in the business. That will lead to future profitability increases. In terms of indirect costs, etc., obviously, over the past couple of years, we've made significant investments across our infrastructure and across our risk management as well. That will likely slow over the last few years, over the next few years. However, we are operating in an inflationary environment, so the likelihood is that there'll be some increase in those costs, but obviously at a slower rate than we expect our revenues to increase.
Understood. Thank you very much.
We have a question submitted in the chat box, and let me read. Two questions. First, Okuda-san's slide number 8, 2030 key vision, ROE 8%-10%+. In trying to achieve that with stability, what do you think about the deviation risk? In the business environment, what's the upside risk, and what is the downside risk? That's the first question. Second question, slide 25, human capital. Employee motivation, engagement are improving, and such initiatives have already borne fruit. But how is that human capital generating values in each of the business divisions? Those are the two questions.
Thank you for the question. Then for the first question regarding the business environment, what's the upside factor, downside factor? First of all, both for upside and downside, there are market environments. But putting that aside, let me focus on two points that I've been communicating within and outside of our company. The strength of Nomura Group is each division and each entity can pursue opportunities together, B2 C2 C. So giving an example of a Tokyo business opportunity, say there's a business corporation and underwriting that business opportunity, we are giving opportunities to retail investors.
We've been engaged in such business for decades, and this is where our strengths lies. So B to B, B to C, in between, going back and forth, we want to do more of such business. Then the number of business opportunities will increase exponentially. And even within Japan, there aren't other places who can do that other than Nomura because in the case of net securities companies, they don't engage in B to B. And banking institutions slightly differ in terms of strategies.
As we mentioned in the workplace segment, we had potential, but we weren't able to leverage those capabilities. But with digital technologies, it's easier for us to approach these clients. And we're also cooperating more overseas. Global wealth management customers are coming to Japan, and they are opening accounts at Nomura Securities. An example, they can invest in Japan, or they can invest in real estate in Japan. And these kinds of business transactions are increasing, B2 B2 C. Or in that case, it's B2 C2 B. But businesses in these areas will increase, and then we will be able to capitalize on our strength and our human capital. So we are focusing in such area, and there's much attention in Japan. So we are at a great timing to capture those opportunities.
Wealth management and investment management under Nakamura-san can co-work, and between wholesale and Sugiyama-san's wealth management can co-work to create wealth opportunities. We're beginning to see seeds of these transactions, which we intend to capture. We talked about platform, and the biggest progress is seen in our partnership with regional banks. Such initiatives are bearing fruit. Our employees are motivated to engage in such area. Nomura's platform, knowledge, business practice through securities business and asset management business. In the case of asset management, if asset managers can come in, they can use Nomura's infrastructure. That would match our purpose. Nomura used to book costs in certain areas, but maybe that could become an opportunity creation to communicate to the external world. We are establishing such new foundations, which we intend to inject efforts in the coming few years. We think that's the upside factor.
I've been saying this before, but investment in inorganic opportunities is another area. So that could be another upside. So those were the three examples. Talking about downside, excluding the market environment, again, Nomura's business as a whole, what's the biggest risk? Employees going into silos and be caught up in silos. One of the reasons we weren't doing well in the workplace is because on one side, we had wholesale, but on the other side, we had retail and Americas doing their own in the Americas and Europe doing their own in Europe. Business growth wasn't maximized, and we weren't able to capture market opportunities even when the market was on an uptrend. But if we are able to seek progress, we will be able to engage in or enjoy more upside.
But if we retreat back to where we used to be, that would be a big risk. And also, for global business, but in the domestic business, we are increasing career hires. And more than 50% or 60% of total hires are career hires, mid-career hires. Our job is to have our employees work and perform from day one and them being well evaluated and compensated. And the business areas are expanding, so maybe we need new talent. But if we lag behind in terms of creating a platform to hire new talent, that would be a risk. But if we are able to achieve this well, that could be categorized as upside. I'm not sure whether I've been able to directly answer your question, but that's for that question. And on human capital, on page 25, various systems have been established. Our HR teams are training many new things.
I've communicated to you about childcare leave and also incentives. In comparison to our peers, we were one of the earliest ones to establish such a system. Male employees weren't taking childcare leave, but last year, it was over 100%. Over 100% is a bit strange, but they're all taking childcare leave. It's not just gender, but DEI is being promoted, and LGBT support is being offered. When there was a Tokyo event on LGBT, our international employee came to Tokyo to attend that event. There are many talents who choose to work for Nomura because of those initiatives. If they work hard and perform, then they will deliver results. We've been focusing on DEI since around 10 years ago, and that had led to more motivation on the part of the employees. So it's delivered. We've defined the purpose.
Defining the purpose is not the end. We have to leverage the purpose to improve the motivation and engagement of our employees. We are hoping that we can tap on this in order to see growth in our business. Thank you.
Thank you very much. The next question submitted through chat, two questions have been submitted. First, regarding Wealth Management. Wealth Management presentation covered the alliance with regional banks. Firstly, why, more than expected, the better results were achieved? What was the reason? Secondly, this success model in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka, can the success model be deployed to other major cities in Japan? The second question, firstly, regarding Wholesale, the keyword self-funding was explained, but the capital being used right now is positioned. That's the starting point. And then every year, profit is generated.
And within that profit generated, businesses expanded. And if market improves, then additional capital injection, is it possible to accelerate the growth? Is such management decision possible? And if you have to improve discipline of management, then ROE for each division, shouldn't it be disclosed to increase the discipline and incentivize the efforts to improve profitability? Those are the two components in my second question.
Thank you for that question. Regarding the alliance, why we delivered better results than expected. Based upon the policy of activating asset management, in order to enrich regional communities, securities business is indispensable. In this kind of situation, as Nomura, we have not been able to deliver services to many clients. It was made evident. By using each other's strengths, we have been conducting alliances. Some clients received our services, but we were not being able to deliver services sufficiently with us alone. Regional banks have their overwhelming presence in the regional communities. Through tie-up with them, we could deliver products and services to wider clients. Also, the collaboration among divisions contributed. This model, it must not be just a shell.
It needs to have that soul injected and toward the same goal or target. We and partners could work toward the same goal. And as a result, clients in regional communities. So the regional banks couldn't provide sufficiently, such as corporate solution services, but such solutions can now be provided using Nomura infrastructure. And local clients are now thankful. So the collaboration with the regional banks is working very well. And regarding other major cities, whether the success can be deployed in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka, including the deployment of headcounts, we have deployed enough or sufficient headcounts. So between Tokyo and other regional cities, the prioritization may be a bit lower, but the possibility is there. But we are going to consider various opportunities for those major cities.
Self-funding, I think, is a wholesale question. To be clear, we've been very clear about the fact that we want to change our business mix over the next few years, both within wholesale, where we'd like to promote more resource-light businesses, but also the balance of businesses across the group as a whole, as Okuda-san has said. The self-funding description is a way for us to explain how we will take that forward without shrinking the wholesale business. To be clear, all of the profitability of the wholesale business goes to the group. In the end, it is a CFO and management decision what financial resources it chooses to devote to the wholesale business.
But what we're trying to demonstrate is the fact that the growth of any resources dedicated to the wholesale business will be driven by its success and its return on the existing resources that are devoted to it. What that means is that most likely, over the next few years, the total percentage of the firm's capital that's devoted to wholesale will not go up. And what it also means is that it's very important what path the wholesale business takes over the next few years because having a stable and steady profitability with good ROE provides an incentive for the wholesale business to perform in line with the firm's targets because, as a result, it will also then get more resources with which to grow its business in the future. So I think this is just a very sensible and healthy way of describing the business.
In terms of the question of whether each division should publish its divisional ROE, I will leave that to the CFO to answer.
Thank you very much for that question. In order to drive ROE for the company as a whole, wholesale ROE improvement holds the key in this situation. In order to grow sales sustainably, wholesale now has introduced the self-funding concept. Of course, there is room for further improvement in wholesale, but the entry barrier is very high at the same time for wholesale. So by growing revenue, we could apply further leverage, and we believe we will be able to improve ROE.
So by working on what we have set out to do, the overall ROE of the company will be improved. But since we are talking about the market situation there, it's going to be a liquidity situation, and sometimes there will be a tailwind in our favor. So to a certain extent, we will have to be flexible. But in principle, self-funding is used to ensure discipline. Regarding disclosure of ROE for each division, always we are considering that possibility.
Thank you. There are two more questions to the chat box. First, on banking business. Already, there is over-competition, but where are the opportunities to achieve victory? What is the Nomura unique advantage? That's the first question. Second question. Domestic investment and wealth management business. Customer-centered management is being required. The margin for financial instruments that you sell is declining. What would be the future, and what's the assumption in the business plan regarding margin? And regarding wealth management, commercial banks, trust banks, other security brokerages, there's intensifying competition. But what would be the biggest competitive edge of Nomura that would support long-term competitive advantage? Thank you. Regarding banking, I will respond. First of all, in this over-intensifying competition, where are the opportunities for us to win? The banking business we want to engage in isn't the ordinary lending or mortgage loans that other lending entities are offering.
We're completely different. Nomura's high-net-worth clients or group of customers to whom we offer wealth management business and using loans capabilities, specifically using equity or securities lending in areas where we are strong or wealth loan. This has been one big strength of Nomura. And more specifically, private order-made, custom-made, tailor-made products and services, equity or business succession regarding services, and inheritances being done by other entities but high-net-worth customers targeted inheritance by tapping on the tax accountants that are affiliated with Nomura. So we are very focused, and our business in this area is close to private banking. So we don't think that the competition is overly intensifying, and the loan balance is steadily growing, as we had shown in my presentation. We want to expand the scope to more high-net-worth people. We think that there could be significant growth of business in this area.
We are establishing our organizational structure and establishing discipline in governance and also managing our business based upon the policy of the banking business. We are truly hoping that this will grow to become a one-standalone division. So those are some of the steps we are taking in advance in the banking business. One difference between commercial banks: we are in the interesting business. Asset management business in Japan is about to grow exponentially, and Nomura Trust has advantage in the trust business, fiduciary business, and we are seeing expansion. And that's a unique strength in our trust business and competitive edge. Thank you.
On wealth management. Margin declining for financial instruments. What's our assumption? In terms of orientation, margin pressure will continue. In wealth management, we consider wealth management as comprehensive asset management. So asset management and non-financial products are being used in order to have touchpoints with our customers and have robust relationships. How do we analyze the margin decline? By being aligned with the needs of the customers, we focus on recurring business through asset management. I talked about expanding the scope of customers, the target customers, and increasing asset under management.
That's the major factor. We hope that we can more than offset the decline in margin through those initiatives. It's not just simple security or investment trust. That business will shrink to close to zero. Since last year, we've been injecting efforts in private assets or portfolio that's not being covered in other asset classes. We're offering those opportunities to enhance our customers' portfolio, and that's an area where we can exercise competitiveness. Second question is on intensifying competition. What's the biggest competitive edge?
I mentioned a couple of points in the presentation. One is increasing product solution lineup, proprietary development, and offering to wider scope. Through offering to wider scope, we are able to have a more enhanced lineup from global products. By selecting the attractive products to our customers and being able to offer such rich product lineup to the customers would lead to asset growth. Another point is the talent of the employees that deliver those products to our customers. Last year, we reallocated our personnel assignment, and face-to-face employees have been reallocated to expand relationships with customers.
We want to have such wealth management business practice become rooted in the Japanese society. That's one of our missions. Each employee is the face to the brand of wealth management, and each of our employees must be motivated to work hard. So fostering human resources that can contribute to Nomura brand would be our biggest asset. Thank you.
Thank you. Then Nomura, and I will talk about our Investment Management Division. On page 4 of my presentation, I gave some numbers. In asset management, Japan, like other Global Markets, AUM is growing, but there is downward pressure on fee income. And one of the reasons why this income declined is twofold. One is the intensifying competition in the industry, and second, product mix. And that is influenced by passive trend, which is unavoidable. But our assumption is if we sit alone and do nothing, AUM will continue to grow, but the income ratio will continue to go down. So that's why we are offering higher added value. And specifically, like described on the right-hand side, we will offer various measures through strategies in order to offer higher value to our customers.
In the asset management industry, we are thinking that there would be further intensification of competition through various policies. So Nomura's active management, and another area is solution or the ability to structure portfolio packaging. By tapping on those two areas of our strength, we would like to maximize business opportunities not just in Japan but globally, both in terms of products as well as customers. Thank you.
It's almost time to finish. Let us finish. Thank you, Ando. If you have additional questions, please kindly send your questions to our office.
Finally, Mr. Okuda, Group CEO, will say closing remarks. Thank you, everyone, for your attendance at the Investor Day event despite our tight schedule. Today, toward 2030, how solidly we are going to grow was explained. All along, wealth management in Japan and wholesale underwent major change or shift of models, and we are starting to see the results. By continuing our efforts, we would like to further clarify the future directions. That's what we've been discussing. Today's event is set to be the interim report. Moving forward, we are going to take various opportunities to explain progress. In April, we announced our purpose.
In more than two years, more than 10,000 employees got involved in the discussion on purpose. So verbalization is important, but what's more important is for each employee to think about the purpose of the company and the purpose of them as individuals, and for employees to think about how they conduct business, how they contribute to the society. So that kind of opportunities, I believe, would be important for employees. And that was our starting point. So as was asked earlier, by using our purpose or using our own foundations so that our employee can contribute to society, hopefully, our employee will be able to contribute to society while feeling a sense of excitement and pride. As we do so, the biggest mission is to grow.
So many people are involved, and I would like to create a platform where many people can get on board and unleash their potential. So those from the media and then those from other stakeholders, we would like to fully communicate with them. And from April, in this background, we announced the appointment of Mr.A ndo as the officer in charge of IR. So Mr. Ando is going to both qualitatively, quantitatively increase the IR activities. So if there is anything, so please contact IR office. IR team members are now very eager. And also, please use our corporate communication people. We would like to be quite active in communication. So thank you once again for your participation today. So with that, we are closing Investor Day event. Thank you very much for your attendance today.