Two banks face NPL penalties

Disciplinary action will be taken against Chung Shing Bank (中興銀行) and Cetelem Bank's Taipei branch (法商佳信銀行) if both fail to lower their non-performing loans (NPLs) on credit cards to below 3 percent in three months, an official with the Bureau of Monetary Affairs said yesterday.

Last month, Cetelem's credit-card NPLs jumped to 3.19 percent from September's 2.63 percent while Chung Shing's dropped from September's 10.1 percent to 3.33 percent, according to Jong Huey-jen (鍾慧貞), director-general of the Bureau of Monetary Affairs under the Financial Supervisory Commission.

Jong said that October marked the first month for implementation of the bureau's three-tier mechanism to impose penalties on banks with credit-card NPL ratios above 3 percent, excluding loans under observation.

The new rules require banks with credit card NPL ratios between 3 percent and 5 percent to submit improvement plans. Those with ratios between 5 percent and 8 percent would be admonished and required to rectify the situation within three months, while lenders with ratios topping 8 percent would be forced to suspend issuing new cards.

Jong lauded the decline in the nation's average credit-card NPL ratio to 0.59 percent -- down from 0.62 percent in September, adding that the nation's 53 credit card issuers had released a total of 42.95 million cards up to last month.

A total of NT$108.1 billion was charged to credit cards, with NT$19 billion for cash advances, according to the bureau's statistics.

Moreover, the ratio of bad loans for cash-advance cards also declined from August's 1.389 percent and September's 0.869 percent to 0.837 percent last month, with a total of 35 card issuers granting NT$222.1 billion in small loans.

Both Taiwan Business Bank (台灣中小企銀) and United Bank (聯邦銀行) succeeded in lowering their ratio of cash-advance NPLs to below 3 percent last month.