Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控) yesterday announced a collaboration deal with Aegon Life Insurance (Taiwan) Inc (全球人壽) and launched a tailor-made investment-linked insurance po-licy for its clients through banking and securities channels.
"The policy's sales will be available to Yuanta clients only through our 220 outlets island-wide -- the largest among peer financial service providers," Her Chang-ming (
Her said that his mega-bank had not ruled out the possibility of teaming up with other insurers to diversify sales of insurance products to its clients, since the bank had no plans to set up an insurance subsidiary.
The tailor-made policy features death coverage of up to NT$10 million (US$308,000) while linking to investments in 41 top-rated funds, 10 exchange-traded funds and four currency deposit accounts, said Wu Hung-lin (
Wu also said that the bank had sold over 300 policies since last month.
Wu said that the bank was aiming to sell 2,000 new first-year policies every month, which could bring in more than NT$2 billion in premium incomes after the first year since policy-buyers average NT$10,000 each in extra investment-related incomes.
To reach an economy of scale, Aegon CEO James Liu (劉先覺) said yesterday, Yuanta will need to sell anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 accumulation policies as a prerequisite to their strategic alliance.
To further tap into the local pension-fund market, Liu said the life insurer -- which has a 3-percent market share in the global pension-fund management market -- hasn't ruled out the possibility of teaming up with other financial service providers to offer tailor-made insurance services.
Although Taiwanese policyholders average two polices each, Liu said that the local pension market had greater-than-expected potential.
As people are living longer lives, people are advised to spend at least one-third of their monthly salary in preparing for the years of their retirement.
In early June, Netherlands-based Aegon announced it would form a local joint venture with Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控), exploring the life insurance and pension market via Taishin Financial's network.
Under the to-be-established insurer, Taishin Financial will hold a controlling 51 percent stake and Aegon 49 percent. It will begin operation in the middle of next year with initial capital of NT$2 billion.
Aegon spokesperson Irene Liu (劉靖珊) yesterday said the life insurer's team-up with Yuanta creates no client conflict between its partners, since each has a different network strength.
"It has always been the company's strategy to diversify sales channels," she said, reiterating that the insurers will seize any opportunity to expand sales channels.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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