The non-performing loan ratio of credit card lending continued to decrease to 2.32 percent last month, down 0.04 percentage points from a month ago and 0.6 percentage points lower from a year earlier, statistics released by the Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday showed.
The number of cards in circulation last month continued to shrink to 36.63 million, a decline of 0.43 percent from the previous month and 9.2 percent less than a year ago, the commission said in a statement posted on its Web site.
The outstanding amount of revolving credit last month dropped NT$6.7 billion (US$202.8 million), or 2.2 percent, from the previous month to NT$299.3 billion, the statistics showed.
Compared with a year ago, the revolving credit level was 25.8 percent lower, it said.
The commission said it would pay close watch on card issuers with bad loan ratios exceeding 3 percent, such as Cosmos Bank (萬泰銀行, 3.5 percent), EnTie Bank (安泰銀行, 6.8 percent) and The Chinese Bank (中華銀行, 16 percent).
Meanwhile, the bad loan ratio of cash card lending last month slid by 0.04 percentage points month-on-month to 7.48 percent, the commission's data showed.
The number of cash cards in effect dropped 1.7 percent month-on-month and 79 percent year-on-year to 1.78 million, while outstanding lending plunged 41 percent from a month ago and 35.7 percent from a year earlier to NT$142.7 billion last month, it said.
Cash card issuers that need further regulatory monitoring are Cosmos (4.09 percent), Taishin International Bank (
Overall, the asset quality of the local banking sector changed slightly last month, with the bad loan ratio of the nation's 41 banks rising 0.03 percentage points month-on-month to 2.35 percent, while the coverage ratio -- the indicator used to gauge the sufficiency of reserves for defaulted loans -- dropped 0.31 percentage points to 54.83 percent, the data showed.
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
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