HSBC Bank Taiwan Ltd (匯豐台灣商銀) is to invest hundreds of millions of dollars per year over the next five years to boost its wealth management business in Taiwan, with plans to hire at least 300 financial planners, the bank said on Thursday.
The expansion is part of a plan announced last month by London-headquartered parent company, HSBC Holdings PLC, to invest US$3.5 billion in its wealth management services in Asia, with an aim to become a leading wealth bank.
“The local market presents ample opportunity for the wealth management business,” HSBC Taiwan retail banking and wealth management head Linda Yip (葉清玉) told the Taipei Times at a media briefing in Taipei.
Photo: Reuters
The plan comes as the nation’s GDP growth has outperformed neighboring countries in the past few years, with mild inflation, which led Taiwan to ranking fourth in purchasing power parity in Asia, after Macau, Singapore and Hong Kong, she said.
“It suggested that Taiwanese on average have more idle money to invest after buying necessities, compared with those in Japan and South Korea, which means more business opportunity for us,” she said.
HSBC Taiwan predicted that the number of premier customers, which the bank defined as those with assets of more than NT$10 million (US$351,333), to rise more than 20 percent in the next five years, as many affluent customers, those with assets of more than NT$3 million, are soon expected to reach the NT$10 million threshold, Yip said.
“Taiwanese have the entrepreneurship spirit. Many start their own businesses after working at a firm for a while, and many succeed in accumulating wealth through their businesses. Our customers’ businesses are quite diverse, ranging from trade to technology,” she said.
HSBC Taiwan would recruit at least 300 customer-facing employees, including financial planners and customer relationship managers, to support its customers, while it would vet job applicants carefully after a surge of reports of employees at other banks stealing money from customers last year, she said.
“Our rewards policy is very balanced. We encourage financial planners to provide the products that meet customers’ demands and risk appetite, not those with higher commissions. We also educate our customers not to share their stamps or bankbooks with others,” she said.
The bank aims to grow its assets under management faster than the market, which would require customers’ trust and the bank offering good financial planning, Yip said.
Its premier customers are expected to contribute to growth momentum for its asset under management, but the bank would not ignore younger customers with savings of more than NT$500,000 with the bank, she said.
The bank would also improve its digital investment platform for the customers, she added.
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
RSS