Japanese Banks Will Ban The Storage Of Cash In Safes

• 19.06.2025, 18:27

In recent years, employees at banks have committed thefts of millions of dollars from customer safety deposit boxes.

The Japan Bankers Association (JBA) will ban the storage of cash in safe deposit boxes following a series of thefts committed by employees of individual banks. It announced this on June 19.

The association has revised the model agreement that member banks use as a template when contracting with customers for safe deposit service. The document now explicitly prohibits storing cash in safe deposit boxes.

As Bloomberg notes, over the past few months, employees at some major banks have allegedly stolen customers' valuables that they had stored in safe deposit boxes. This has prompted regulators and banks to take a closer look at the service's delivery mechanism, given the potential for illegal activities.

JBA Chairman Junichi Hanzawa explained that cash stored in this way in banks has a high risk of being involved in various money laundering schemes or used for other criminal purposes.

Last year, Japan's largest financial group, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, fired an employee who was accused of stealing millions of dollars from the safes of dozens of customers. Despite the incident, the bank decided not to abandon the service of storing cash in safe deposit boxes.

A similar incident was reported in February 2025 by another holding company, Mizuho Financial Group, the third largest banking company in Japan. The incident took place back in 2019: two customers' assets worth tens of millions of yen stored in safe deposit boxes were stolen.