Taiwan Ratings Corp (中華信評) yesterday maintained a negative credit outlook on the local life insurance sector despite the industry turning a profit last year.
“The sector’s return to profit last year does not reflect a change in the credit risks plaguing life insurance companies,” Taiwan Ratings credit analyst Patty Wang (王珮齡) said.
The industry’s low returns on average assets (ROAA) and volatile capitalization will continue to slow improvement in the overall credit profile, despite improved profitability last year after years of net losses or small profits since 2008, according to the agency.
Taiwan life insurers’ ROAA remained thin at 0.3 percent last year, lower than the range of 0.4 percent to 0.7 percent before the global financial crisis and it lags behind its Asian peers, the agency said.
“The prolonged low earnings are beyond our original expectations, and may remain stagnant under the prevailing low interest rates, sluggish economic growth and global capital market volatility,” Wang said.
The capital buffer of Taiwanese life insurers also remains weak as a result of investment volatility, in comparison with major regional or global peers.
The sector’s capitalization has yet to return to the pre-crisis level during 2006 and 2007, despite a pickup since 2008, while equity-to-asset ratio was standing at 3.6 percent at the end of October last year, weaker than the 5 percent to 6 percent range during the 2006 to 2007 period, the agency said.
The sector’s total assets have increased, but its total equity has failed to grow at a similar pace, Wang said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”