TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The outgoing president of Japan Post Holdings Co. on Wednesday stressed the need to revamp the company's leadership amid a series of scandals, including the misuse of personal information from its banking unit's customers.

"As it has been five and a half years since I took office, I judged that it is time for a leadership change," Hiroya Masuda said at a press conference, adding that the former state-owned postal and financial giant will promote a "drastic" generational shift.

Masuda, 73, who served as governor of Iwate Prefecture, northeastern Japan, will be replaced by Kazuyuki Negishi, 54, who was a senior executive officer at Japan Post Co., the holding company's postal arm.

Negishi currently serves as a senior executive officer at Japan Post Holdings.

The leadership overhaul is expected to be formally approved at a shareholders' meeting in June.

Masuda, the former internal affairs and communications minister, took the helm of Japan Post Holdings in January 2020 following a separate scandal involving a huge number of faulty sales of insurance products.

Japan Post was privatized in 2007 and is still 35.98 percent owned by the government. It was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2015 along with subsidiaries Japan Post Bank Co. and Japan Post Insurance Co.

Last month, the ministry issued a business improvement order for Japan Post Holdings and Japan Post, which had used the personal information of around 10 million customers from Japan Post Bank to sell insurance and financial products.

The holdings company also faced criticism after a delivery worker at a post office in Yokohama, near Tokyo, drove under the influence of alcohol while on duty last May.