The average rate that Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and Mizuho Financial Group Inc.’s main banking units pay depositors fell to 0.00 percent for the first time in the nine months ended December, from 0.03 percent a year earlier, their latest earnings statements show. The numbers aren’t exactly zero: the banks round the figures to two decimal places by simply cutting the third digit.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. will hire about 20 private bankers from Barclays Plc in Japan as the two companies end a six-year alliance and the U.K. bank scales back its wealth-management business in the country. The bankers will join the lender’s brokerage unit in April, said Kouichi Shibata, a spokesman for SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. in Tokyo.