The nation’s life insurance market might continue its downturn due to new regulations that took effect yesterday, but the market is expected to stabilize by the end of this year, Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) president Lee Chang-ken (李長庚) said yesterday in Taipei.
“It is foreseeable that sales of life insurance products would continue to fall in the short term as consumers are likely to purchase fewer policies after premiums went up,” Lee said at the Cathay Service Ecosystem Partnership Day.
“However, it seems to me that consumer demand for insurance products tends to be rigid and they might reconsider if they really need insurance products,” he said. “Nonetheless, insurance sales are expected to recover gradually.”
Photo: CNA
The new regulations would help the life insurance industry develop in a healthier way in the long term, he said.
Four new regulations took effect yesterday as the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) aims to boost life insurers’ financial solvency and prepare them for the implementation of new insurance contracts standard IFRS 17 in 2025.
The commission lowered life insurance companies’ liability reserve interest rates on all policies denominated in New Taiwan dollars and US dollars by 25 basis points and 50 basis points respectively to keep them in line with declining market rates.
The commission also set a new lower limit on the death benefit-to-policy value ratio, which would incentivize insurers to sell fewer savings plans or policies linked with wealth management, as they provide fewer death benefits.
Insurance companies must calculate the contractual service margins of their products and make sure the margins are positive when applying to the FSC.
Companies are also requested to adopt a mechanism to stabilize their products’ declared interest rates, which determine the bonuses that policyholders receive.
Micron Memory Taiwan Co (台灣美光), a subsidiary of US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, has been granted a NT$4.7 billion (US$149.5 million) subsidy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs A+ Corporate Innovation and R&D Enhancement program, the ministry said yesterday. The US memorychip maker’s program aims to back the development of high-performance and high-bandwidth memory chips with a total budget of NT$11.75 billion, the ministry said. Aside from the government funding, Micron is to inject the remaining investment of NT$7.06 billion as the company applied to participate the government’s Global Innovation Partnership Program to deepen technology cooperation, a ministry official told the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s leading advanced chipmaker, officially began volume production of its 2-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a recent update on the company’s Web site. The low-key announcement confirms that TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware providers Nvidia Corp and iPhone maker Apple Inc, met its original roadmap for the next-generation technology. Production is currently centered at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, utilizing the company’s first-generation nanosheet transistor technology. The new architecture achieves “full-node strides in performance and power consumption,” TSMC said. The company described the 2nm process as
Shares in Taiwan closed at a new high yesterday, the first trading day of the new year, as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) continued to break records amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, dealers said. The TAIEX closed up 386.21 points, or 1.33 percent, at 29,349.81, with turnover totaling NT$648.844 billion (US$20.65 billion). “Judging from a stronger Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, I think foreign institutional investors returned from the holidays and brought funds into the local market,” Concord Securities Co (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺) said. “Foreign investors just rebuilt their positions with TSMC as their top target,
POTENTIAL demand: Tesla’s chance of reclaiming its leadership in EVs seems uncertain, but breakthrough in full self-driving could help boost sales, an analyst said Chinese auto giant BYD Co (比亞迪) is poised to surpass Tesla Inc as the world’s biggest electric vehicle (EV) company in annual sales. The two groups are expected to soon publish their final figures for this year, and based on sales data so far this year, there is almost no chance the US company led by CEO Elon Musk would retain its leadership position. As of the end of last month, BYD, which also produces hybrid vehicles, had sold 2.07 million EVs. Tesla, for its part, had sold 1.22 million by the end of September. Tesla’s September figures included a one-time boost in
RSS