First-year premiums (FYPs) of foreign-currency insurance policies in April were NT$27.1 billion (US$914.3 million), the lowest in the past six months, as the COVID-19 pandemic affected insurers’ sales activities, data released on Tuesday by the Financial Supervisory Commission showed.
The FYP represented a 45 percent plunge from a year earlier and was larger than a 13 percent annual decline in the first quarter, which the commission attributed to a 58.8 percent retreat in sales of investment-linked foreign-currency insurance policies to NT$6.3 billion and a decline of 38 percent in sales of traditional foreign-currency insurance products to NT$20.8 billion.
Although consumers in April were still interested in buying US dollar-denominated insurance products because of the cheaper greenback against the New Taiwan dollar, foreign-currency insurance policies in general saw weaker momentum as insurers could not hold regular marketing events amid the pandemic, a commission official said on Wednesday.
Insurers tend to rely on face-to-face customer visits to introduce foreign-currency insurance policies, which are more complicated than NT dollar products and involve foreign-exchange risk, the official said.
Overall, cumulative FYPs of foreign-currency insurance policies decreased 21 percent annually to NT$160.2 billion during the January-to-April period, a smaller decline than a 41 percent drop in FYPs of all life insurance policies to NT$268 billion during the same period, data showed.
That was because declared interest rates of foreign-currency products — which determine the bonuses that policyholders receive — were still higher than those offered by the NT dollar insurance products, the official said.
For example, US dollar products’ declared interest rates remained above 3 percent, while the rates of NT dollar products were at about 2 percent.
FYPs of US dollar policies totaled US$5 billion in the first four months, down 11 percent from a year earlier, while those of yuan-denominated policies shrank 77 percent to 562 million yuan (US$79.4 million) and Australian dollar policies fell 42 percent to A$230 million (US$158 million) over the same period, data showed.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
RSS