Prudential of Taiwan is offering a Financial Wellness program that helps companies’ employees better prepare for the future and become financially secure. How long will you live? What kind of health condition are you likely to experience? What kind of lifestyle do you hope to enjoy in your “Golden Years”? How much money will you…
Regulating STOs could provide a new equity fundraising channel for startups, but questions remain about the utility of the new rules. Just a few years ago, some virtual currency advocates were suggesting that Taiwan could become a hub for all things crypto in Asia. Given the conservative nature of Taiwan’s financial industry, the thought of…
Internet-only banks could potentially serve a credit-strapped young demographic that prefers to bank online, but what will be the effect on an already saturated banking sector? Taiwan is overbanked. Its 37 banking institutions operate roughly 5,000 branches for a population of about 23 million people. Because the sector’s US$1.6 trillion in assets are spread among…
The competition for market share for mobile-wallet business is intensifying as consumers increasingly settle transactions with their smartphones. Taiwan’s convenience stores have always lived up to their name – with one exception. They refuse to take most debit or credit cards. Besides cash, for years the only way to pay at a convenience store was…
An unflagging focus on stability, sometimes at the expense of reform, defined Perng Fai-nan’s two decades as head of Taiwan’s Central Bank. In Perng Fai-nan’s two decades of service as Governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan) before his retirement in February, the New Taiwan dollar’s value held steady, rarely deviating…
Proponents see big opportunities for Taiwan in this nascent space. Virtual currency fever swept the globe over the past year, peaking when Bitcoin’s value hit US$19,500 in December. Since that zenith, the preeminent cryptocurrency’s value has plummeted to just $10,000, illustrating its extreme volatility. Bitcoin is the best known cryptocurrency, but over a thousand have…
Banks remain cautious about embracing full-throated digitization. Customers of Taiwan’s domestic banks sometimes feel like they’re in a time warp. Basic savings accounts often are not automatically equipped with online banking – customers have to request that service. And in many cases, the standard means of tracking account activity is a passbook that must be…
Taiwan aims to pursue financial technology innovation, but over-regulation continues to block the needed experimentation and flexibility. Technological advances are increasingly transforming every aspect of financial services, a phenomenon that has given rise to the term “fintech,” short for financial technology. In Taiwan, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) in 2015 established a Fintech Office to…
When is a foreign bank not a foreign bank? Answer: When it establishes a domestic subsidiary. Between 2007 and 2013, five leading international banks – Standard Chartered, Citi, HSBC, DBS, and ANZ – received approval from the financial authorities to expand their presence in Taiwan’s retail banking market by taking over the operations of local…
New York regulators’ fining of Mega Bank last year for lax compliance practices was a wake-up call. In a victory for the nation’s regulators, Taiwan in July was removed from a regional list of countries judged to have insufficient money-laundering controls. Taiwan had spent months revising legislation and pushing its financial institutions to crack down…
