HSBC Taiwan Ltd yesterday organized a volunteer event simultaneously at its 30 branches nationwide with an aim to allow elementary school children first-hand experience of its banking facilities and services.
President and chief executive officer Adam Chen (陳志堅) led 350 employees to take part in the high-profile event “Little Banker Experience Day” where 500 elementary school children, most from disadvantaged family, had the opportunity to go through banking operations and services.
“HSBC Taiwan has long been concerned about the education issue and the event is intended to underscore the importance of financial education,” Chen told reporters at the Neihu branch in Taipei.
The half-day experience may help participating children to develop some financial sense and draw career plans later in their life, Chen said.
In April each year, HSBC Taiwan will arrange volunteer activity for its employees to visit students in remote schools and prepare fun and educative games to demonstrate their love and concern for the children, Chen said.
For this year, all 30 branches set aside a business day for the “little banker” event, which is an unprecedented practice as other companies carry out volunteer activity on weekends, Chen said.
The “little banker” event consists of three main parts: digital banking, banknote recognition and counter service experiences.
At the digital banking station, volunteers use iPads to demonstrate the bank’s online banking capability and introduce its global account integration functions and high standardization of confidentiality technology.
Children learned to use the devices to check interest rates, foreign exchange rates and other financial management tools.
A boy student Hiao Yen (小彥), 12, said the digital banking experience was fun as it enabled him to gain immediate knowledge of foreign exchange rates for major currencies.
At the banknote recognition station, volunteers taught children to recognize paper currencies of major countries and differentiate between counterfeit and authentic New Taiwan dollars. Volunteers also allowed the children to use money counting machines to highlight the importance of accuracy in their work.
In addition, the children played banking guests and went through counter services on making deposits, withdrawals, transfers, credit card fee payments and currency exchange transactions to understand the bank’s daily operations.
Hsiao Fang (小帆), a girl student, said she loved the experience of the money counting machine the best.
HSBC Taiwan are long-time sponsor of children’s welfare causes with Boyo Social Welfare Foundation (博幼社會福利基金會), Eden Social Welfare Foundation (伊甸社會福利基金會), and HSBC Kids Read project (匯豐兒童英語悅讀計畫), among others.
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
RSS