The process of Taiwanese banks establishing services in China, including setting up branches and offering Chinese yuan exchange services, is set to make concrete progress later this month, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said yesterday.
Banking services in China are expected to be the main subject of discussions at the third round of cross-strait banking cooperation talks in the second half of the year between the commission and the China Banking Regulatory Commission.
Taiwanese businesspeople in China are looking forward to the advent of Taiwanese banks entering China’s financial sector, as they trust Taiwanese financial institutions more than local Chinese banks and find working with them more convenient, said Lin Bing-hui (林丙輝), dean of National Chung Hsing University’s College of Management.
As cross-strait relations improve, there has been more cooperation between the two countries’ financial sectors.
For instance, on Thursday, the commission approved applications by two Chinese banks — Bank of China (中國銀行) and Bank of Communications (交通銀行) — to provide financial services in their Taiwan branches, including receiving deposits of more than NT$3 million (US$100,374) and giving businesses loans.
While the Chinese banks that have set up branches in Taiwan are fairly large, they still have a long way to go before they can compete with local banks and local branches of foreign banks in terms of foreign exchange and other services, according to Norman Yin (殷乃平), a professor at National Chengchi University’s Department of Finance.
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