JBIC Brand Guidelines: The 1950 Export Bank of Japan, a 1999 Merger & a 2012 Relaunch

A 1950 lender, renamed in 1952.

JBIC’s history starts in Tokyo on 28 December 1950, when the Export Bank of Japan began work. Japanese Wikipedia dates its launch to that day and links it to Hayato Ikeda, then the finance minister. On 1 April 1952 the lender took the name Export-Import Bank of Japan, shortened to JEXIM in English, and it kept that name until 1999.

The present name dates from 1 October 1999. On that day, English and Japanese Wikipedia both say, the Export-Import Bank of Japan merged with the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF) to form the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, in Japanese Kokusai Kyōryoku Ginkō. Reuters, in a December 2025 report carried by The Asahi Shimbun, describes the same 1999 merger. The combined bank ran two separate lines of business: international financial operations for Japanese companies abroad, and overseas economic cooperation, the loans that formed part of Japan’s official development assistance. English Wikipedia notes that the two were kept apart in the bank’s financial statements.

That arrangement lasted nine years. On 1 October 2008 the international financial operations were folded into the new Japan Finance Corporation (JFC), alongside three domestic policy lenders, while the overseas economic cooperation work moved to the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Inside JFC the international wing kept the JBIC name; English Wikipedia says this was done to keep the trust the old bank had built abroad. Reuters’ 2025 report says the bank’s mandate shrank during structural reforms in the early 2000s and has since expanded again.

The current company dates from 1 April 2012, when JBIC was separated from JFC and set up as a joint-stock company under the Japan Bank for International Cooperation Act of 2011. Japanese Wikipedia describes it as a special company wholly owned by the Japanese government and as Japan’s export credit agency. Its head office is in Ōtemachi, in Tokyo’s Chiyoda ward, with a branch in Osaka.

Loans, guarantees and equity.

JBIC describes itself as Japan’s policy-based financial institution, working to supplement private-sector lenders rather than compete with them. Its profile, dated 19 June 2026, lists four fields of work: the overseas development and acquisition of resources that matter to Japan; the international competitiveness of Japanese industry; overseas projects that aim to preserve the global environment; and responses to disruption of the international financial order.

The bank’s menu reads like a trade-finance glossary. Its site lists export loans, import loans, overseas investment loans and untied loans, alongside equity investment, guarantees, bridge loans, the purchase of loan assets and bonds, and securitisation. Japanese Wikipedia explains the terms: export loans finance Japanese machinery, equipment and technology sold abroad; investment loans support Japanese companies’ production, infrastructure and acquisitions overseas; untied loans go to projects run by foreign governments and their agencies; and bridge loans give short-term foreign-currency funding to developing-country governments under balance-of-payments strain. Much of the lending, it says, uses project finance.

Environmental work carries its own label. JBIC’s GREEN operations fund projects aimed at environmental preservation, and its investor pages include Green Bonds. Its ESG Policy was released in October 2021 and its Fifth Medium-Term Business Plan in June 2024, the bank said in an April 2026 release. In October 2025, Reuters reported, JBIC launched a new investment facility, and its governor at the time told the agency that demand for funding to reinforce supply chains was rising.

The network is wide. Japanese Wikipedia counts 18 overseas offices, with Singapore, London and New York serving as regional hubs; the bank’s own list runs from Bangkok and Jakarta to Rio de Janeiro, Dubai and Warsaw. The bank also publishes an Integrated Report and a Survey Report on Overseas Business Operations, based on questions to Japanese companies about their business abroad.

Design and documentation.

Development banks are owned by their member countries and economies rather than by private shareholders, and their websites put that ownership up front. The Asian Development Bank lists its 69 members with the year each one joined; the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank publishes a register of regional, non-regional and prospective members with their subscriptions and voting power. For these institutions the shareholder list is part of the brand, set out as openly as a logo.

Names travel in several languages. ADB’s website runs in English, Japanese and Chinese, with some country pages in other languages, and most of these lenders are known by short sets of initials that have to read the same on a loan document in one country and a project sign in another. The palettes in this group of guides lean on deep blues, greens and teals, chosen here as our own unofficial interpretations rather than official colours.

Their websites are organised around what they finance and where. ADB’s menus divide its work by region and subregional programme and separate public- from private-sector financing, which can take the form of loans, guarantees or equity; the AIIB sorts its project list by status, from proposed to approved, on hold or cancelled, and by sovereign-backed and nonsovereign-backed financing. These project databases are where a reader can follow a single road, power line or water scheme from proposal onward.

Accountability is presented as part of the same identity. ADB lists an Accountability Mechanism and Independent Evaluation among its pages; the AIIB has its Project-affected People’s Mechanism, approved in 2018. Alongside annual reports and financial statements, these evaluation pages and complaint routes are where the banks set out, in their own words, how their projects are reviewed.

Japan’s strength, for the world.

The bank’s identity is quiet and corporate. Its full name is used in English and Japanese, and its initials, which Japanese Wikipedia says are read “jay-bic,” do most of the work in press releases. Its corporate slogan pairs a Japanese line, roughly “Japan’s strength, for the world,” with an English one, “Supporting Your Global Challenges.” Its corporate philosophy sits under three short headings, Hands-on Policy, Customer-1st Approach and Forward-looking Action, followed by a code of conduct in seven lines.

Brazil shows how long some of its ties run. On 25 March 2025 JBIC signed a memorandum of understanding with Brazil’s BNDES covering mineral resources, sustainable energy such as hydrogen, ammonia and bioethanol, and climate measures, and it describes a cooperative relationship of more than 60 years. In April 2026 it signed its seventh credit line to BNDES under GREEN operations since March 2011, for biofuel and electricity transmission projects. The bank’s profile, dated June 2026, names Kazuhiko Amakawa as governor and Tadashi Maeda as chairman.

For a design guide, JBIC shows how a state lender with a 1950 root can carry one compact set of initials through three names, a merger, a 2008 fold-in and a 2012 re-establishment. Compare the ADB in Manila and the World Bank. For this guide we use a deep navy, a vermilion accent and a pale office grey with a modern sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep JBIC’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.