The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) would investigate banks that charge “unreasonably high handling fees” when approving loans to companies affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, FSC Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said yesterday.
“We will ask why the bank charged very high fees. If [the bank] cannot provide a fair reason or explanation, we will deal with the matter,” Koo told a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee in Taipei, without specifying what action it plans to take.
He was responding to a comment by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵), who said she had received a complaint from an affected company, which was charged a handling fee of NT$80,000 (US$2,676) by Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank (台北富邦銀行) for a loan of NT$1.7 million, meaning it received only about NT$1.62 million.
Under a relief program set by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the interest rate is capped at 1.845 percent for loans to companies affected by the pandemic, Lin said.
Taipei Fubon’s high handling fee is a higher interest rate in disguise, she added.
Lin said that handling fees vary from bank to bank and state-owned Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行) had told her that it could have approved loans of up to NT$2.8 million with no handling fee.
Taipei Fubon said in a statement later yesterday that it had clearly informed the borrower, one of its regular clients, about how it would charge handling fees and that the firm fully understood the terms.
The bank charges a handling fee on all loans with maturity of at least one year and it usually deducts the fee directly from the loan, Taipei Fubon said, without revealing how it calculates its fees.
“The handling fee of NT$80,000 is too high, given an average handling fee of NT$5,000 for mortgages at most banks,” a bank executive told the Taipei Times on condition of anonymity.
“It was likely that the bank tried to gain more profit from fees to make up for its loss in interest income due to the government’s interest-rate cap for relief loans,” he said.
Offering relief loans is not a profitable business, but some banks are willing to do it to deepen their relationship with clients and are hopeful that they would be rewarded by the FSC, such as being given priority in setting up new branches, he added.
The central bank, which said it would offer NT$400 billion for lenders to aid ailing companies, has capped the interest rate for loans of less than NT$2 million at 1 percent and 1.5 percent for loans between NT$2 million and NT$6 million, he said.
The Banking Act (銀行法) has set regulations on charging handling fees for mortgages, personal loans or revolving credits, but the law has no clear rules for fees on relief loans, the executive said, adding that the FSC still has multiple tools to address the issue.
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
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
RSS