State-run Taiwan Cooperative Bank (TCB, 合庫銀行), Taiwan Cooperative Financial Holding’s Co (合庫金控) main subsidiary, is seeking to attract more affluent individuals and corporate customers to close the gap between it and its rivals in retail and corporate banking, top bank executives said yesterday.
“There is ample room for Taiwan Cooperative Bank to catch up with its competitors in terms of retail and corporate banking, since only 50 percent of our clients own credit cards issued by us,” TCB vice president Chen Mei-tsu (陳美足) told a media briefing.
Since 1997, the lender has issued 8,000 premium credit cards, a number that has failed to increase over the years even though TCB tops its peers in terms of number of branches, boasting about 300 nationwide, Chen said.
The bank has issued a total of 400,000 credit cards, but only 55 percent of them are active, company data showed.
To address the bottleneck, TCB joined forces with MasterCard Inc, the world’s second-largest credit and debit card network, to woo wealthy Taiwanese who have annual incomes of NT$2 million (US$66,500), or NT$3 million in deposits, Chen said.
The lender aims to increase its number of high-net-worth customers by 5,000 over the next year by offering generous benefits and discounts for a range of stores, restaurants and recreational facilities both at home and abroad, the TCB vice president added.
More than 95 percent of Taiwanese polled in a MasterCard Taiwan’s survey said they plan to travel overseas in the coming year, with 60 percent saying they prefer to pay for trips abroad with a credit card.
E.Sun Commercial Bank (玉山銀行), the flagship unit of E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控), tops its domestic rivals in terms of number of in-house premier credit cards in use and in spending per card, an edge it gained by aggressively expanding its consumer banking market share over the past two years, MasterCard associate vice president Fanny Lin (林碧芬) said.
However, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行), the banking arm of Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), is hot on E.Sun Bank’s heels after the lender entered an exclusive partnership with US retail giant Costco Wholesale Co, Lin 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],”