Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) yesterday urged all of the nation’s insurers to use the same method when calculating average wages, which they are required to disclose next year, so the public can receive unbiased information.
The Financial Supervisory Commission on Nov. 8 announced that all listed companies would be obligated to reveal the average wages of their nonmanagerial employees by June next year after the Legislative Yuan passes an amendment to the Securities and Exchange Act (證交法).
The regulations would also require listed firms to explain to the public any growth in earnings per share alongside declines in average wages, or if they outperform their rivals with higher earnings per share, but have comparatively lower average wages.
“Cathay Life is not afraid to make the disclosure next year,” company president Liu Shan-chi (劉上旗) said on the sidelines of an event.
Cathay Life said that its junior salespeople, who accounted for half of its total staff of 25,839 last month, make between NT$400,000 and NT$900,000 per year.
However, as there is no criteria for the calculation method and many insurers reveal average wages on their own initiative, the public would be misled by such disclosures, Liu said.
Cathay Life, which has the largest number of salespeople in Taiwan, said that it has revealed the average wages of all nonmanagerial employees, while some of its counterparts have only calculated the average wages of office workers, whose salaries might be higher.
The company suggested that insurers could separately calculate the average wages of office workers and salespeople, as the two kind of employees usually have different salary levels, Cathay Life marketing planning department senior vice president Brian Tsai (蔡秉杰) said.
The insurer said that it had recruited more than 5,000 salespeople as of last month, the highest number in 10 years, of whom about 60 percent were younger than 35.
As some employees are to retire this year, Cathay Life said that it expects to see a net increase of 1,000 employees this year, the highest number in five years.
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