The Japan Financial Services Agency has published the English version of its FSA Analytical Notes 2026.2, a series of case studies that apply granular data to inform supervision and policy work. This issue analyses regional banks’ involvement in programmes that match managerial talent with regional companies and how that links to firms’ reported shortages of managerial talent. The paper combines records from the Regional Economy Vitalization Corporation of Japan’s matching programme with results from the FSA’s corporate questionnaire survey on financial institutions’ intermediary services. Firms that designate a regional bank as their main bank were less likely to be in a state of “facing a shortage of managerial talent and not having recruited managerial talent” where their main bank had achieved a relatively high number of matches under the programme. An AI-based textual analysis of regional banks’ disclosure reports also indicates that banks with stronger programme records tend to reference client human-resources support more frequently. The FSA positioned expanded use of data in supervision and policy-making as a medium- to long-term agenda and indicated it will continue to build its data analysis capabilities and data infrastructure.