New body established to oversee banking reforms

A new, cross-industry financial service association, the Taiwan Financial Services Roundtable (TFSR), was established yesterday with the aim of promoting prosperity in the nation's finance industry and facilitating the consolidation of the overcrowded banking sector.

The association is comprised of 100 members from eight existing financial associations, including the Bankers' Association (銀行公會), Taiwan Securities Association (券商公會) and the Life Insurance Association of the Republic of China (壽險公會), and 11 organizations including the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp, the Taiwan Futures Exchange Corp and the Financial Information Service Co (金資中心).

Cheng Shen-chih (鄭深池), chairman of the nation's No. 3 lender, Mega Financial Holding Co (兆豐金控), was yesterday elected for a three-year term as the TFSR's chairman.

"The government wants to promote the financial-services sector, which it considers to be a significant and strategic industry, and hopes to strengthen Taiwan's competitiveness in the international finance arena through consolidation," President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said in a speech at the association's launch ceremony yesterday.

The government is confident that it can reach its reform goals through close collaboration with the industry, Chen said.

In October last year, Chen initiated the second stage of financial reforms, which proposed halving the number of state-run banks to six by the end of this year and reducing the number of financial holding firms to seven from the current 14 by the end of next year.

The TFSR has been modeled on the US' Financial Services Roundtable, which serves as a platform for cross-industry coordination and communication with financial authorities.

The role of the TFSR will be to act as a mediator to convey the needs of the industry to the authorities and to offer input to the legislature by issuing an annual policy statement, TFSR secretary-general Mark Wei (魏寶生) said.

Wei, chairman of AIG Investment Corp Taiwan, is a former director-general of the Insurance Bureau under the Financial Supervisory Commission. He left the government post in March.

The TFSR expects to form close ties with its US and European counterparts to further the globalization of Taiwan's finance sector and, as the first financial roundtable in an Asian country, to promote the establishment of similar associations in the region, Wei said.