The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) would soon approve three financial technology (fintech) sandbox experiments involving insurance sales, blockchain technology and fund management, FSC Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said yesterday.
The commission would allow ezTravel Co (易遊網) to sell travel insurance policies provided by Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽) on its Web site, exempting it from regulations on selling insurance, Koo said.
People can only purchase policies online from insurers’ Web sites, but in the experiment, they would be able to choose policies and pay the premiums directly to EzTravel, Koo said.
However, EzTravel cannot spend the premiums freely and must deposit them in a dedicated bank account and transfer them to Cathay Life on a regular basis, he said.
EzTravel would not be allowed to sell other kinds of insurance, he added.
If the experiment makes it more convenient for people to purchase travel insurance online, the commission would amend regulations to allow more institutions to cooperate with insurers, Koo said.
Second, the FSC would allow Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank (台北富邦銀行) and Taishin International Bank (台新銀行) to use blockchain technology in their domestic fund transfer and payment services, and to address information flows, Koo said.
As domestic fund transfer and payment services are already fast and convenient, they are not expected to be any faster in the experiment, but the banks could check if the blockchain technology is viable, Department of Planning Director-General Lin Chih-chi (林志吉) told the Taipei Times by telephone.
Only clients of the two banks can take part in the experiment, Lin said.
If the technology is proven to be reliable, the commission might allow the banks to adopt the technology in their remittance service, he said.
Remittances, which usually take a few days if conducted through banks, are expected to be faster with the help of blockchain technology, Lin added.
Third, the commission said it would allow How-Investech Inc (好好投資科技), a financial technology company, to partner with Far Eastern International Bank (遠東商銀) to provide new fund management services, Koo said.
Customers who have purchased fund products offered by the bank would be able to exchange their products with those of other customers without paying redemption fees, Koo said, adding that the company would also use blockchain technology in the experiment.
The commission has approved the applications for the experiments and would make an official announcement soon, including the number of participants and the amount of exposure, Koo said.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
RSS