Still in the stratosphere.

This article presents information on the consumer finance industry in Japan. Since the early 1990s, the industry has been a rare success story in Japan's bleak financial-services market. The value of outstanding loans has risen at a double-digit pace and now stands at $100 billion. Consumer loans dominate turf that is shared in other rich countries with overdrafts and credit-card debt. The top consumer-finance firms have sophisticated risk-management systems, and could teach the banks a thing or two about managing credit risk.