Intensified Competition among Banks I have pointed out that financial institutions in Japan have lower gross operating profits per employee than their U.S. and European peers, and the breakdown showed that not only their  7  net interest income but also their net non-interest income, which is not susceptible to interest rate developments, is low (Chart 5).
These observations suggest that Japanese financial institutions' low profitability is due not only to persistent low interest rates but also to other structural factors. Specifically, one likely factor is that competition among financial institutions has continued to intensify for a long time.