American International Group Inc (AIG), the world's biggest insurer, launched its wealth management business in Taiwan yesterday, saying it expected the new business to become profitable by the end of next year.
The new business, AIG Wealth Management Services Taiwan (友邦證券), aims to tap into the nation's base of affluent investors looking to invest upwards of US$100,000, the company said in a statement yesterday.
AIG Wealth Management is also aiming to secure 10 percent of the nation's wealth management market within five years, Peter Wild, chief executive officer at AIG's private banking unit, said at a launch ceremony.
Taiwan is the second Asian market after Hong Kong where AIG has opened wealth management operations.
AIG Wealth Management is the newest addition to the AIG group of companies in Taiwan, which includes Nan Shan Life Insurance Co (
AIG Wealth Management signed a memorandum of understanding with Nan Shan yesterday to market its wealth management products through the life insurer's domestic network of 33,000 salespeople, the statement said.
"We are not hiring hundreds of relationship managers as AIG Private Bank [did]. We are employing AIG's sales force to bring their clients to us," Wild said. "You need a certain timeframe to break even, which should be the end of next year."
Nan Shan, one of the nation's top three life insurers, now serves 3.7 million clients, with more than 7.4 million life insurance policies in effect.
AIG Wealth Management hopes to build its business by signing up the 9,000 to 10,000 high net-worth clients with investable assets of US$2 million that its insurance affiliate now serves, it said.
The competition to sell tailor-made wealth management products to the affluent is heating up in Taiwan, where the richest citizens hold more assets than in any Asian country except China and Japan.
UBS AG, HSBC Holdings PLC and Standard Chartered PLC have stepped up hiring in the nation to grab market share.
UBS said earlier last month it aimed to manage a 10th of the nation's private wealth by 2015. The Swiss bank currently manages about 1 percent of onshore wealth in Taiwan.
HSBC said earlier this month it planned to make wealth management one of its top priorities in the nation, aiming for a 6 percent to 7 percent market share in three years, while Standard Chartered said last month that it would begin private banking next year.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
NEW PRODUCTS: MediaTek plans to roll out new products this quarter, including a flagship mobile phone chip and a GB10 chip that it is codeveloping with Nvidia Corp MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday projected that revenue this quarter would dip by 7 to 13 percent to between NT$130.1 billion and NT$140 billion (US$4.38 billion and US$4.71 billion), compared with NT$150.37 billion last quarter, which it attributed to subdued front-loading demand and unfavorable foreign exchange rates. The Hsinchu-based chip designer said that the forecast factored in the negative effects of an estimated 6 percent appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar against the greenback. “As some demand has been pulled into the first half of the year and resulted in a different quarterly pattern, we expect the third quarter revenue to decline sequentially,”
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (better known as Foxconn) ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose 60 places to reach No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc. at 348th, Pegatron Corp. at 461st, CPC Corp., Taiwan at 494th and Wistron Corp. at 496th. According to Fortune, the world’s
DIVERSIFYING: Taiwanese investors are reassessing their preference for US dollar assets and moving toward Europe amid a global shift away from the greenback Taiwanese investors are reassessing their long-held preference for US-dollar assets, shifting their bets to Europe in the latest move by global investors away from the greenback. Taiwanese funds holding European assets have seen an influx of investments recently, pushing their combined value to NT$13.7 billion (US$461 million) as of the end of last month, the highest since 2019, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Over the first half of this year, Taiwanese investors have also poured NT$14.1 billion into Europe-focused funds based overseas, bringing total assets up to NT$134.8 billion, according to data from the Securities Investment Trust and Consulting Association (SITCA),
RSS