Far Eastern International Bank (FEIB, 遠東國際商銀) yesterday became the nation’s first lender to gain regulatory approval to offer open banking services.
The medium-sized lender said it had been given the go-ahead by the Financial Supervisory Commission on Thursday to launch an account integration app, a new service provided in conjunction with affiliate Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信).
The move makes FEIB the nation’s first third-party service provider, as technology is reshaping the banking industry and more customers prefer online transactions, FEIB digital banking division head Simon Tai (戴松志) said.
Photo courtesy of Far Eastern International Bank
The new app enables customers to integrate their accounts at different banks, allowing them to manage their savings accounts, bills, credit cards and funds without having to open multiple apps or windows, Tai said.
The app uses artificial intelligence to recommend the most favorable options for customers when making wealth management decisions or choosing banking services, the Taipei-based lender said.
FEIB was able to steal a march on its peers in open banking due mainly to its collaboration with Far EasTone, which does not keep a record of customers’ banking details or passwords, maintaining the safety of transactions, Tai said.
The lender has achieved significant progress in digital transformation, with 93 percent of its transactions taking place over the Internet this year, up from 90 percent last year, he said.
FEIB has more than 40,000 digital banking accounts, which function as an entry-level product to help the bank gain more business, much like credit cards did in the past, Tai said, adding that the bank plans to introduce more digital services later this month.
The bank posted net income of NT$2.33 billion (US$81.93 million) in the first three quarters of the year, or earnings per share of NT$0.68, FEIB president Thomas Chou (周添財) said.
That suggests a 20 percent full-year retreat from a year earlier, as the banking sector takes a hit from the COVID-19 pandemic, Chou said.
Increased market liquidity is weighing on loan growth and increasing the costs of provisions, but FEIB has fared better than its peers on non-performing loans so far this year, he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts