Local banks saw their pretax profits hit a record last year, buoyed by stable fee income and interest income growth, but local insurers suffered huge hedging losses and saw their pretax profits drop to the lowest point in five years, data released by the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) showed yesterday.
Financial sector firms saw their combined pretax profits decline 2.89 percent annually to NT$523.3 billion (US$16.94 billion) last year, as the banking sector’s increased profits were offset by losses in the insurance, securities and futures sector, the data showed.
“We will conduct a comprehensive review of insurers’ ability to fight risks, demanding that they control the risks wisely,” FSC Chairman Wellington Koo told a news conference in New Taipei City.
Last year’s financial performance was stable, given that companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange reported growing revenue and an increased average daily turnover of NT$163.5 billion, Koo said.
“However, no one can forecast if we will face headwinds or downwinds for the year ahead — we can only be cautious with the risks,” he said.
Banks reported combined pretax profits of NT$334.2 billion for the whole of last year, up 9.2 percent from a year earlier, and their profits remained above NT$300 billion for the fifth year in a row, Banking Bureau Director-General Jean Chiu (邱淑貞) said.
Banks booked a return on equity of 9.31 percent and return on assets of 0.7 percent last year, a slight increase from a year earlier, Chiu added.
“Banks did well quite last year, and their profits were backed by continuing growth in lending and consumer credit card spending,” Koo said.
Combined with credit cooperatives, the whole banking industry reported pretax profits of NT$377.7 billion for the whole of last year, a 7.12 percent annual increase and a new high, the data showed.
However, unlike banks, insurance, securities and futures firms saw their pretax profits decline last year, the FSC said.
Net foreign exchange losses for life insurance companies totaled NT$230.9 billion, up 31.1 percent from losses of NT$176.1 billion a year earlier, the data showed.
With the New Taiwan dollar last year falling 2.97 percent against the US dollar, local life insurers booked foreign exchange gains of NT$281 billion, but those gains were offset by heavy hedging losses of NT$484 billion, the data showed.
Life insurance firms saw their pretax profits last year plunge 27.8 percent to NT$842 billion, from NT$116.6 a year earlier, the data showed.
Securities and futures firms’ combined pretax profits totaled NT$46.5 billion, an annual decline of 15.76 percent, the FSC said, adding that they were affected by volatility in global and local equity markets.
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
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day