Corporate Governance Compliance and Risk Management

The Sekisui House Group considers compliance to encompass more than legal compliance alone; it must also incorporate our corporate social responsibility. Moreover, since any lack of employee awareness of compliance is a matter of corporate risk, we consider compliance and risk to be two sides of the same coin. We regard them as essential management issues that must always be addressed and we remain committed to this view.

The Risk Management Committee, an advisory body to the Board of Directors, and the Governance Committee, which has been under the auspices of the CSR Committee since 2017, implement the PDCA cycle while working to improve issues related to compliance. We have also established a Management Committee to deliberate on important investment projects before resolutions and request the approval of the Board of Directors to promote compliance and risk management.

Moreover, we formulated the Sekisui House Corporate Ethics Guidelines to list common items with which officers and employees must comply in order to undertake corporate operations at each group company. We undertake revisions as appropriate from the perspective of changing social conditions and group management.

Every October during our annual Compliance with Corporate Ethics Check, all executives and employees submit a Pledge Regarding Compliance with the Essentials of Corporate Ethics.

There was no major violation of laws or voluntary standards in the relevant fiscal year.

• No disciplinary action or dismissal took place against any employee for non-compliance of the anti-corruption policy. To the best of our knowledge, no cost was incurred on penalties, surcharges or settlement related to corruption.
• There were no major infractions of environmental laws or regulations. There were no accidental spills or other incidents impacting the environment surrounding our factories.
• There were no legal or regulatory infractions or penalties paid related to the provision and use of our products and services. There were also no infractions of health and safetyrelated regulations or voluntary standards.
• There were no substantiated petitions for redress related to customer privacy infringements or customer data loss.
• The group faced no legal action, substantial fines or punitive measures in connection with violations of laws or regulations related to competition and monopolistic practices.

The Sekisui House Group has established an Internal Reporting System that allows employees and other officers and employees of companies with whom we have ongoing business relationships to report illegal or inappropriate behavior in the group to the company itself or to outside lawyers. This system complies with the Whistleblower Protection Act.

Responsibility for risk management at the Sekisui House Group is undertaken by the various departments assigned to this task with initiatives conducted according to work duties within technical department and administrative department manager meetings. We have established divisions that cover multiple head office departments to clarify the responsibilities and authorities of directors and executive officers.

The Risk Management Committee, an advisory body to the Board of Directors, strengthens management by collecting and verifying the status of development of the risk management system in each department of the group; receives reports in the event an instance of risk arises; and verifies recurrence prevention measures.

We have also put in place a Business Continuity Plan to deal with the occurrence of large-scale natural disasters and epidemics of infectious disease.