KGI Bank (凱基銀行), a unit of China Development Financial Holding Corp (CDFHC, 中華開發金控), will not share its financial technology (fintech) experimental business platform with Next Bank (將來銀行), in which it holds a 7 percent stake, as it thinks the Web-only bank should set up a different and independent model.
In its sandbox experiment that started in December last year and ended in August, KGI collaborated with Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) to deploy mobile identity authentication technology to provide loans to customers who possess no credit records and made the applications online.
The bank has gained approval from the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) to continue a pilot program from last month to March next year.
Since KGI is a shareholder of the virtual bank, it is a question if the bank would transfer its fintech service to Next Bank.
“We would keep the innovative business allowing consumers to apply for small loans via mobile devices to ourselves, while Next Bank has to run another model independently if it plans to serve this business,” CDFHC president Alan Wang (王銘陽) told the Taipei Times on the sidelines of the company’s earnings conference last week.
Given that KGI has used its own resources to set up the platform and a credit scoring model that determines an applicant’s risk factors and how much it should lend, the bank would continue to operate it, KGI Bank president Amy Tsao (曹慧姝) said.
“We believe every bank has its own lending standards, so we expect Next Bank to set up a new one itself,” Tsao added.
Next Bank director Liu I-cheng (劉奕成) yesterday said he was a bit surprised by KGI’s decision, as he thought they would be able to use KGI’s platform.
“We have not discussed this topic yet … and it might take us some time to decide if to establish another platform by ourselves. But we do think the innovative service benefits consumers and brought great convenience to all,” Liu said by telephone.
The FSC said if the two banks are to use the same platform offering loans to different consumers, it would review their business to see if they comply with regulations.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS