For its biggest banks, however, there's a hitch: a generation of professional front-line staff have little experience with rising interest rates. The 38 members, which include credit dealers and data scientists, work to improve coordination between retail and wholesale divisions, as higher rates are expected to fuel trading activities. Still, if higher rates are new to most bankers, so they are for their clients, who have for years enjoyed rock bottom rates in Japan. "Almost no front-line bankers have experienced short-term rates above 0.5% as Japan last saw such rates in the 1990s," he said. "I think there are a lot of scepticism among front-line bankers over whether they can really increase their lending rates."

---

Persons: Masahiro Minami, they've, Izuru Kato, Kato, Satoru Yamamoto, Atsushi Kikuchi, Tokyo Tanshi's Kato, Makiko Yamazaki, Ritsuko Shimizu, David Dolan Organizations: MUFG Bank, TOKYO, Resona Holdings, Reuters, Bank, Mitsubishi, Daiwa Securities, Mizuho Financial, Mizuho, Thomson Locations: Japan, Tokyo