The Taiwan Cooperative Bank (TCB, 合庫銀行) yesterday inked a joint venture agreement with BNP Paribas Assurance to set up an insurance arm with an initial working capital of NT$2 billion (US$60 million), in which the local bank will take up a controlling 51 percent stake.
Once BNP Paribas Assurance TCB Life Insurance Co (合庫人壽) is launched, TCB will have the right to appoint its chair while its French counterpart will appoint the president, the Taiwanese bank said at a signing ceremony yesterday.
“With operation synergy via resource integration and service portfolio extension, we aim to transform TCB into a financial holding brand that provides full financial services,” TCB chairman Liu Deng-cheng (劉燈城) said, adding that the new insurance entity would benefit from the bank’s 301 outlets nationwide as well as the French insurer’s 35-year experience in bancassurance in 41 countries.
Liu said the new insurer would break even “within two years, no later than three years,” as many existing TCB clients have placed calls and expressed an interest in becoming policyholders.
He did not give a timetable as to when the insurance arm would begin operations.
Jean-Bertrand Laroche, head of BNP Paribas’ international operations, said he would provide his insurer’s expertise to support what he referred to as one of the two pillars that support business.
Financial Supervision Commission Chairman Sean Chen (陳冲) yesterday said the deal would create a “win-win” partnership. A former chairman of TCB, Chen initiated the Taiwanese-French partnership during his tenure.
The new insurer will also be the third of its kind after state-controlled First Financial Holding Co (第一金控) teamed up with the UK-based Aviva PLC to found First Aviva Life Insurance (第一英傑華人壽) in May 2007, while Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控) announced plans in December 2007 to form a joint venture with Dutch insurer Aegon NV in Taiwan.
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