DBS Bank Taiwan (星展台灣) yesterday said it faces mixed effects from the COVID-19 outbreak, with its traders benefiting from a volatile equity market and wealth management business growing amid interest rate cuts, but its credit card business has been affected.
“It is certain that some of our businesses would face challenges due to the outbreak, but we still need to find new opportunities,” DBS Taiwan general manager Lim Him-chuan (林鑫川) said at a news conference in Taipei.
As people refrained from making big-ticket purchases and canceled overseas travel, the bank’s credit card business took a hit in the first two months, despite some consumers increasing their spending at e-commerce outlets, Lim said.
“[Credit card spending in] the second half of this year is expected to be better than the first half if the virus could be contained by June,” he said.
The bank said that the central bank is expected to lower interest rates in the near term in step with its global peers, which would give its wealth management business an opportunity to grow.
“The lower the rates become, the more eagerly our clients would look for products with good yields,” Lim said.
The lender yesterday launched a new program for US dollar-denominated deposits, offering a 0.66 percent interest rate for deposits of US$10,000 or greater.
DBS Bank expects to see deposits to grow at about 10 percent this year, while some clients might cancel their fixed deposits if the central bank cuts the rates, it said.
As for other investment tools, gold is likely to be in high demand due to investors’ need to hedge, DBS consumer banking vice president Chen Yu-chia (陳昱嘉) said.
Meanwhile, DBS said it would focus on providing loans to small and medium-sized businesses, e-commerce companies and firms that have plans to digitize their operations, the bank said.
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