Sumitomo Mitsui Financial : Notice Regarding the Establishment of SMBC Wevox, Inc.

【NEWS RELEASE】

September 15, 2023

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group

Atrae, Inc.

Notice Regarding the Establishment of SMBC Wevox, Inc.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Inc. (President and Group Chief Executive Officer: Jun Ohta, hereinafter collectively referred to as "SMBC Group") and Atrae, Inc. (President and CEO: Yoshihide Arai, hereinafter "Atrae") have concluded a shareholder agreement on September 15th, 2023, to establish SMBC Wevox, Inc. (President and CEO: Hidekazu Sugimoto, hereinafter "SMBC Wevox") on October 2nd, 2023, to support improvements in corporate value from the perspective of human capital. From around the beginning of October, they will start providing corporations with "SMBC Wevox," a solution to improve organizational capabilities.

SMBC Wevox is a cloud service that visualizes intangible organizational capabilities, such as employees' characteristics and psychological states as well as company culture, in a timely manner to create opportunities for better decision making and actions within an organization.

Through regular questionnaires that place minimal burden on employees, it is possible to grasp the situation in an agile and flexible manner across various units and attributes, such as department, age range and job type. The improvement know-how and examples built into the service, as well as supporting features using AI, promote spontaneous dialogue with on-site staff and enhancements in organizational capabilities.. In the future, the aim is to establish new models for evaluating corporate value by combining financial information with non-financial information, such as organizational capabilities, and by utilizing data from SMBC Wevox to propose solutions to human-resource and organizational issues. Going forward, in collaboration with external partners, measures will be tailored to the situation at each individual organization and considerations will be made regarding the establishment of systems to verify the effectiveness of any measures implemented.

It is expected that new value will be created in Japan by aligning job satisfaction, which has not been quantified for staff within an organization until recently, with corporate value and by reinforcing the mutual connections between employees and corporations.

By supporting the formation of "organizations everyone can be proud of," SMBC Wevox aims to showcase the value of the whole of Japan to the world by maximizing the potential and the performance of more people and organizations.

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【For reference: Company Outline】

Company Name	SMBC Wevox, Inc.
Address	1-10-10, Azabu Juban, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Capital	JPY 50million (capital reserve of JPY 50million)
Shareholder Composition	Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group 55％
	Atrae, Inc. 45％
Planned Establishment	October 2nd, 2023
Representative	President and CEO: Hidekazu Sugimoto
Business Description	Supporting improvements in organizational capabilities and corporate
	value, etc.

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