The push to bring Taiwanese capital onshore is enjoying some success, though its international ambitions may prove harder to realize.

The southern Taiwanese metropolises of Kaohsiung and Tainan are best known for their cultural and historical relics, culinary excellence, and industrial prowess — not so much for being finance hubs. But that may not hold for long, with both cities primed to become key bases for the Asian Asset Management Center (AAMC) initiative.

The project is part of efforts to persuade Taiwan’s most affluent citizens to bring — and keep — more of their wealth onshore. The Kaohsiung pilot zone, launched in July 2025, attracted more than NT$728 billion (US$22.8 billion) in its first year of operation. Its success has paved the way for a Tainan pilot zone that was announced in February, but whose launch date has yet to be unveiled.

The Kaohsiung pilot allows dozens of approved financial institutions to test 38 specialized financial business models under relaxed regulatory frameworks. These include family office services, advanced lending products, and cross-border wealth management. 

Officials are lauding the achievements in Kaohsiung. Speaking at an event in July commemorating the pilot zone’s one-year anniversary, Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) Chairman Peng Jin-lung said that although the pilot zone is just a year old, it’s already seen some significant progress. He noted that it has attracted 58 financial firms that serve more than 6,000 high-net-worth clients. About 400 family office clients have received professional advisory services there.

As it accumulates operational experience, Peng said, the zone will provide a foundation for Taiwan to position itself as a leading international asset management center. Though he acknowledged that global competition to do so is intensifying.

Premier Cho Jung-tai also spoke at the event, where he noted Taiwan’s long-running efforts to establish itself as a financial hub. The earliest iteration of this idea was President Lee Teng-hui’s Asia-Pacific Regional Operations Center in the early 1990s. Later administrations promoted Taiwan as an Asian Wealth Management and Fundraising Center, then an Asia-Pacific Wealth Management Center. Former President Tsai Ing-wen (2016-2024) emphasized attracting international corporate capital and developing high-net-worth wealth management services. The current Lai Ching-te administration has built on its predecessor’s vision by putting the policy into practice.

Striking it rich

Taiwan’s economic strength, the Premier argued, now means its longstanding asset management efforts can finally come to fruition. In his remarks, Cho emphasized that Taiwan’s economic fundamentals are stronger than ever; in the past decade, nominal GDP has doubled to US$1 trillion while per capita GDP has nearly doubled from US$22,000 to US$40,000.  With a highly skilled talent pool, a world-leading semiconductor sector, and a network of overseas Taiwanese businesspeople, Taiwan is well-placed to build a world-class asset management industry, he said.

But Cho’s assessment overlooks another important factor: Taiwan’s ultra-wealthy population has skyrocketed over the past few years in tandem with the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. As the top supplier of advanced semiconductors essential for AI hardware, Taiwan has posted exponential economic growth over the past 18 months. That has translated into record earnings for key companies in AI supply chains and an unprecedented stock market rally.

Forbes, which tracks the net worth of the world’s wealthiest individuals, noted in June that the collective wealth of Taiwan’s 50 richest people jumped to a record US$308 billion in 2025 from US$197 billion a year earlier. Among the 124,000 Taiwanese with at least NT$100 million (US$3.17 million) in assets, the wealthiest — about 1,200 people with at least NT$3 billion in assets — saw their wealth triple in scale between 2023 and 2025, according to a report published in March by E.SUN Commercial Bank and KPMG Taiwan.

Clients with a net worth of over NT$3 billion kept an average of 48% of their assets overseas, the report found, which illustrates a key challenge for the AAMC. Sean Chen, deputy head of financial services at KPMG Taiwan, told Taiwan’s Central News Agency that high-net-worth clients often move their money offshore as their net worth grows. They do so for tax planning reasons, to spread risk or to pursue broader investment opportunities, he added.

Addressing tax issues should be a top priority for the AAMC, industry executives say. Tiffany Hsieh, head of BlackRock Taiwan and co-chair of AmCham Taiwan’s Asset Management Committee, says that “a lot of high-net-wealth people put money in Hong Kong and Singapore because there is no estate tax [abolished in February 2006 and February 2008 respectively]. But Taiwan still has this. High-net-wealth investors can also access broader variety of investment products via the private banks in HK and Singapore.”

For resident citizens, Taiwan’s estate tax applies to assets held both in Taiwan and overseas, but for non-residents and foreigners, it applies only to those held in Taiwan. The standard exemption is NT$13.33 million (about US$416,000), with progressive tax rates ranging from 10-20%, depending on the net taxable value.

Other tax issues the financial sector wants to see addressed by the AAMC include the lack of tax incentives and the relatively high personal income tax rate in Taiwan compared to Hong Kong and Singapore.

Division of labor

With the AI ​​boom rapidly generating private wealth, the challenge for the AAMC is turning more of that wealth into growth momentum for Taiwan’s wealth management services. The FSC is critical to that process, says Chang Kai-Jiun, director of the Financial Research Institute at the Taiwan Academy of Banking and Finance (TABF), a non-profit backed by the banking industry and overseen by the financial regulator. He points to the establishment of a pilot zone in Kao-hsiung and the easing of regulations to gradually open up services for high-net-worth clients. “The aim is to retain capital accumulated by the tech industry within Taiwan while attracting more overseas funds and financial institutions to the market,” he says.

While the AAMC has had a successful first year, questions remain about how it will play a complementary role to globally competitive offshore hubs favored by Taiwanese, like Singapore. The city-state has emerged as the top destination for Taiwanese wealth seeking diversification since Hong Kong — Asia’s most established wealth management hub — has seen its autonomy eroded. Following the passage in 2020 of Hong Kong’s draconian national security legislation, which was introduced by China’s central government in Beijing, authorities gained broad powers to freeze, confiscate, or forfeit assets connected to broadly defined offenses like subversion or foreign collusion.

While Hong Kong retains its status as a major wealth management hub, Singapore has an edge because of its status as a sovereign state outside of Chinese jurisdiction. According to the CTBC and BCG report, 55% of Taiwan’s ultra-wealthy said that they have recently increased allocation into Singapore — the highest share when compared with other geographies.

Wealthy Taiwanese families go to Singapore for succession structures, offshore trusts, and a geopolitical hedge, notes Zennon Kapron, director of the fintech consultancy GL Insight. “You can’t compete for money whose entire motivation is to diversify away from you,” he says. “But that’s the wrong scoreboard. The sensible model is division of labor — Taiwan as the origination point where wealth is created and managed, Singapore as the offshore leg. The measure of success isn’t whether Kaohsiung beats Singapore, but rather it’s how much money stops leaving.”

Hsieh of BlackRock Taiwan says that local and foreign financial firms can play different but complementary roles in the AAMC. “I think FSC Chairman Peng Jin-lung has said very clearly: the ultimate goal is that wealth management clients just take a train to Kaohsiung,” she says. “They don’t need to fly to Singapore or Hong Kong. And I think that’s the local banks’ role in the Asia Asset Management hub.”

Foreign asset managers, however, have a different focus. They do not serve individual investors in Taiwan. Rather, “our goal is to build Taiwan as a regional hub,” Hsieh says. The objective is for teams of foreign asset managers in Taiwan to be able to cover and support the entire Asia-Pacific region, like their counterparts in Hong Kong and Singapore, she adds. 

Chris Cottorone, president of Taiwan research at the family office TriOrient Investments and co-chair of AmCham Taiwan’s Alternative Assets Committee, says that Taiwan should have a Singapore-style financial center where investors do not have to convert incoming funds into New Taiwan dollars. This has grown in importance now that Taiwan companies have become crucial technology and supply chain partners to firms globally, including in the United States. However, Taiwan’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which account for more than 98% of businesses in the country, are in need of much more capital so that they can support their clients in capital-intensive endeavors like deploying artificial intelligence infrastructure, he says.

Cottorone also sees security risks tied to the concentration of Taiwanese wealth overseas as global geopolitical friction grows. “It is better to have more [of that wealth] onshore, investing in firms here that are in turn supporting their clients around the world,” he says.

Strengthening the talent pipeline

Looking ahead, ensuring that the talent pipeline can keep up with brisk demand for asset management services will be both a necessity and a primary challenge for the AAMC. In April, Bloomberg reported that in the past five years, base salaries for top wealth managers in Taiwan have jumped more than 40% in some cases. The most competitive candidates are being enticed with sign-on bonuses and annual packages of roughly NT$10 million, the report said, citing recruitment firms.

The increase in compensation is helping close the gap with Singapore, where total compensation packages range from S$350,000 to well over S$700,000 (US$260,000-520,000), dependent on Assets Under Management (AUM).

TABF’s Chang says that Taiwan does not lack overall wealth management talent. What is currently in relatively short supply is senior talent able to provide comprehensive private banking services — such as family office consulting and global asset allocation — to high-net-worth clients.

At the same time, with the demand in Taiwan growing for family office services, alternative investments, and global asset allocation, private banking is evolving from traditional wealth management into a comprehensive advisory service that integrates finance, law, accounting, and trusts, Chang observes. “This shift demands greater professional depth and a broader international perspective from talent,” he says. Yet cultivating professionals with cross-disciplinary expertise — spanning international investment, tax planning, family trusts, wealth succession, cross-border finance, and risk management — typically takes years.

To address this bottleneck, TABF has launched the Asian Asset Management Center Talent Cultivation Program in alignment with the government’s policy. The initiative covers training for entry-level, intermediate, and senior asset management professionals. Additionally, consideration could be given to relaxing regulations on the recruitment of international financial professionals to attract top-tier private banking talent to Taiwan, Chang says.

GL Insight’s Kapron says that Taiwan can also aim to tap into its diaspora talent pool. “There’s a generation of Taiwanese private bankers in Hong Kong and Singapore who already know the clients, the language, and the family dynamics,” he says. As Taiwan’s market deepens, bringing those bankers home “is the fastest injection of senior talent available.”

Kapron says AI can serve as a force multiplier for bolstering the wealth management talent pool. “The technology won’t replace relationship managers, but it can make a good relationship manager productive enough to do the work of two,” he says.