A significant majority of Taiwanese plan to pass their assets on to their children, with property and land the most popular forms of inheritance, a survey jointly conducted by the Center of Opinion Survey and Market Research at National Chengchih University and CTBC Bank (中信銀) showed yesterday.
About 68.6 percent of those polled said they want to pass on their wealth to the next generation of their family, while 31.4 percent said they have no plans to do so, the survey found, after polling 1,068 adults who are responsible for managing wealth in their households.
“Taiwanese have a tendency to leave their fortune — if they have one — to their children, while an increasing amount of foreigners prefer to donate their wealth to charity,” said National Chengchih University statistics professor Jeng Tian-tzer (鄭天澤), who led the survey.
Only 23.7 percent of respondents said they had inherited assets from their parents, with 75.6 percent indicating they had not, the survey said.
Jeng expressed little surprise at the results because most of the participants were 25 and older, and Taiwanese parents normally hold on to their wealth until very late in life.
Among those who inherited assets from their parents, 62.8 percent said they were left real estate, 59.7 percent acquired plots of land, 22.9 percent obtained cash and 1.6 percent got insurance policies, the survey showed.
There is a high prevalence of bequeathing assets among parents who make more than NT$150,000 (US$5,000) a month or who have overall family assets in excess of NT$30 million, especially if they only have one child, Jeng said.
Property was the most popular asset to pass on, with 77.7 percent of parents saying they wanted to leave their children houses, the survey said.
About 34 percent of the respondents indicated that they would prefer to pass on land, another 18.9 percent to leave living funds and 14.9 percent intend to provide education funds, according to the survey.
The poll also found that a majority of the parents surveyed — 51 percent — do not educate their children on wealth management and that 71.3 percent of those who do equate wealth management with bank savings, the survey said.
CTBC Bank senior vice president John Yang (楊子宏) said most parents will have difficulty realizing their wish to leave their children a sufficient inheritance if they rely solely on bank savings to boost asset values.
CTBC was previously known as Chinatrust Commercial Bank before it renamed itself in late June.
It costs NT$8.46 million to buy a 30 ping (99m2) apartment in suburban areas in Greater Taipei and that number rises sharply in popular districts, Yang said, recommending families adopt more aggressive wealth management methods to take advantage of the low interest rate environment and increase their asset holdings.
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