The Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday fined Nan Shan Life Insurance Co (南山人壽) NT$30 million (US$966,651) for its failure to solve the problems of its “Envision Project” information techonolgy system, the highest-ever fine levied in a single case.
The system has caused problems with about 152,000 policies sold by the company, Insurance Bureau Director-General Shih Chiung-hwa (施瓊華) told a news conference in New Taipei City, with some policies automatically being suspended or halted.
Nan Shan Life has contacted about 150,000 affected policyholders and has promised the commission that it would compensate its clients as soon as possible, Shih said.
Even so, the commission has barred the company from selling any new investment-linked policy (ILP) products until it has fixed the problems and has passed an examination by an independent third party, Shih said.
The net value of the investments linked to Nan Shan Life’s ILP products was NT$180.9 billion as of the end of June, she said.
The penalty needed to be severe enough for the company to improve the system and bring its customer service levels back to normal, she added.
In addition, the commission suspended Nan Shan Life chairman Du Ying-tzyong (杜英宗) from being chairman or a board member of the company for two years and banned him from receiving any salary or benefits during the period.
Du, who has been chairman since Aug. 13, 2015, was responsible for introducing the Envision Project after he commissioned German software company SAP SE to install the NT$4.7 billion system in 2014 when he served as deputy chairman, the commission said.
However, Du failed to supervise, get external opinions or reassess the risks of the project, which led to the budget ballooning to NT$10.1 billion, the commission said.
Nan Shan also did not conduct parallel testing before launching the Envision Project in September last year, which was one of the reasons the company failed to identify and fix the glitches, the commission added.
The commission also demanded that the insurer cut the salary of a former chief auditor surnamed Yang (楊) by 30 percent and barred him from acting as chief auditor for the next three years.
The company must submit a plan to improve the system and and timetable for fixing all the existing problems, Shih said.
Nan Shan Life said in a statement that it would respect the commission’s decisions and would fix the system as soon as possible.
The commission also fined Nan Shan Insurance Co Ltd (南山產險) NT$6 million for its failure to assess the risk of implementing the new system.
The fine is much smaller than that handed to Nan Shan Life as the problems did not adversely affect the company’s policyholders, the commission said.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is