Since the 1990s, however, Japan has ceased to be a high-growth economy, even in a relative sense. In the past twenty years, Japan’s growth rate has been very low, at 1.0 percent annually in real terms and 0.4 percent in nominal terms.
The guidance has underscored the importance of a well-structured risk-management program for subprime lenders and has stressed that lending standards should include well-defined underwriting parameters, such as acceptable loan-to-value ratios and debt-to-income ratios, and minimum acceptable credit scores.