Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控) and SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控) yesterday said that they would remain cautious amid fears caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.
Taishin Financial, which has no subsidiary banks or branches in China, told an investors’ conference that its operations in Taiwan remain unaffected, as its Chinese investments and lending account for less than 1 percent of its total liabilities.
However, its two financial leasing companies in China have seen their nonperforming loan ratio slightly increase to 3 percent since January, Taishin Financial president Welch Lin (林維俊) said.
“We are not worried about the situation, as our clients were willing to repay the money, but failed to do so due to their cities imposing a lockdown,” Lin said, adding that the two units would keep in close contact with the clients.
The two units’ nonperforming loans account for less than 0.5 percent of the firm’s total, he said.
Banking arm Taishin International Bank (台新銀行), which ranks first in digital savings accounts with 1.79 million, is to launch new services on its Richard online platform to compete with three Web-only banks that are to begin operations in the second half of this year, Taishin Financial said.
“We are not afraid of our competitors offering higher savings rates to try to poach our clients. We believe that our customers will stay with us, as we have integrated multiple functions, such as payments and investments,” Lin said.
SinoPac Financial, which has one subsidiary in Nanjing, China, as well as three branches in Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shanghai, told an investors’ conference in Taipei that it has not seen any increase in its nonperforming loan ratio.
As China last year supplied less than 1 percent of its total profit, it expects limited effect even if the outbreak continues, Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行) president Eric Chuang (莊銘福) said.
With a 42 percent jump in fee income from loans last year, the bank forecast that its lending momentum would slow in the short term, but recover later.
“We are cautious, but not pessimistic... We will continue concentrating on growth in fee income this year instead of investment returns amid a highly volatile financial market,” SinoPac Financial president Stanley Chu (朱士廷) said.
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