Cathay United Bank (
"We urge the bank to show more goodwill and cherish its corporate image," the foundation's chairman Jason Lee (李鳳翱) said at a press conference.
The consumer loan package in question, launched last August, claimed in advertisements that it carries a zero interest rate, but the related costs such as handling fees are equivalent to an annual interest rate of 17.8 percent.
This marketing strategy raised the ire of the Fair Trade Commission, which on March 3 slapped a NT$400,000 (US$13,000) fine on the bank for fraudulent advertising. The non-profit foundation gave the bank until yesterday to take reasonable steps to compensate the 18,000 people who signed up for loans.
In a statement issued yesterday, the bank said it has appealed against the Fair Trade Commission's ruling and therefore cannot make any further response.
After two weeks of media attention, the bank recently decided to lower the package's effective interest rate from the original 17.8 percent to 14.8 percent. Clients can choose to repay the remaining capital in 50-month or 60-month installment programs, the bank's spokesman Joseph Jao (
The bank will suffer NT$750 million in losses as a result of the interest-rate cut, Jao said.
In response to the bank's concession, Lee said the foundation will postpone a proposed group lawsuit against the bank.
Wu Cheng-hsuel (
To snatch a bigger market share in the fast-growing consumer-loans market, financial institutions tend to play on words in advertisements, which leads to a non-transparent transaction environment, Wu said.
To counter this situation, the commission has requested the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Financial Supervisory Commission to map out regulations by next month that would make it easier for consumers to make comparisons among various financial products.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained