Fubon Insurance Co (富邦產物保險), the non-life insurance arm of Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), said yesterday that one of its subsidiaries, Fubon Property & Casualty Insurance Co (富邦財產保險), has obtained the green light from the China Insurance Regulation Commission to set up a branch in Chongqing, China.
The insurer said it would be the first time it has extended its presence in China’s Fujian Province to the Chinese hinterland.
Fubon Insurance set up Fubon Property & Casualty Insurance in the Fujian city of Xiamen in October last year as a first step in targeting the growing Chinese market. The subsidiary also runs a branch office in Fuzhou, also in Fujian Province.
Fubon Insurance chairman Shih Tsan-ming (石燦明) said that after one year of operations in Fujian, the insurer has built up experience in serving customers in China, particularly Taiwanese investors who operate there.
Fubon Financial chairman Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) said that as more Taiwanese investors are using Chongqing as a springboard into western China, the financial firm is determined to bring a wide range of services, in insurance and banking, to an increasing number of potential clients.
Meanwhile, Fubon Life Insurance (富邦人壽), also an insurance arm of Fubon Financial, is waiting for approval from the Chinese regulator to set up a 50-50 joint life-insurance firm in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, with Nanjing Zijin Investment Co (南京紫金投資公司).
Fubon Financial said Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank (台北富邦銀行), its banking arm, is scheduled to set up a representative office in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, by the end of the year.
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