Nan Shan Life Insurance Co (南山人壽) has been fined NT$7.6 million (US$271,914) for breaches of the Insurance Act (農業保險法) due to lax internal controls, risk controls and anti-money-laundering practices, the Financial Supervisory Commission said on Thursday.
The life insurer’s salespeople illegally paid premiums with their own credit cards on behalf of clients to earn rewards points offered by banks after reaching agreements with clients, the commission said.
The clients would give money to the salespeople and share the rewards, it said.
From September 2018 to June last year, 122 salespeople paid NT$779 million in premiums in 588 transactions, Insurance Bureau Director Tsai Huo-yen (蔡火炎) told a news conference in New Taipei City.
Nan Shan Life’s system should have blocked such payments, as the salespeople were neither policyholders nor beneficiaries, Tsai said.
However, the company’s systems failed to detect the discrepancies, he said.
The lapse in this area shows that the company did a poor job of curbing money laundering, as it is important to authenticate payer identities, he said.
The commission has demanded that Nan Shan Life fix its systems, he said.
The 122 salespeople worked in branches across Taiwan, with it likely that some found loopholes in the system and shared the information with colleagues, Tsai said.
Nan Shan delayed a report about a loss in June last year of 37 million euros (US$44.71 million) from an investment in German payments provider Wirecard AG, waiting until August last year, the commission said.
Wirecard filed for bankruptcy last year.
That indicated faulty internal controls, the commission said.
Nan Shan also exercised poor risk control over investments, as its investment review committee in 2018 increased the chief investment officer’s authorization limit to the same as the committee’s limit.
“That meant almost no limit at all, meaning the chief investment officer could approve almost any transaction,” Tsai said.
The commission in 2019 fined Nan Shan Life NT$30 million for its “Envision Project” information system, which wrongfully suspended or halted 152,000 policies.
However, the system that failed to catch the problematic premium payments was the old system, Tsai said.
Nan Shan Life has been fined NT$59.8 million by the commission over the past three years, the most among Taiwan’s financial institutions, commission data showed.
SEEKING CLARITY: Washington should not adopt measures that create uncertainties for ‘existing semiconductor investments,’ TSMC said referring to its US$165 billion in the US Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) told the US that any future tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors could reduce demand for chips and derail its pledge to increase its investment in Arizona. “New import restrictions could jeopardize current US leadership in the competitive technology industry and create uncertainties for many committed semiconductor capital projects in the US, including TSMC Arizona’s significant investment plan in Phoenix,” the chipmaker wrote in a letter to the US Department of Commerce. TSMC issued the warning in response to a solicitation for comments by the department on a possible tariff on semiconductor imports by US President Donald Trump’s
‘FAILED EXPORT CONTROLS’: Jensen Huang said that Washington should maximize the speed of AI diffusion, because not doing so would give competitors an advantage Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday criticized the US government’s restrictions on exports of artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, saying that the policy was a failure and would only spur China to accelerate AI development. The export controls gave China the spirit, motivation and government support to accelerate AI development, Huang told reporters at the Computex trade show in Taipei. The competition in China is already intense, given its strong software capabilities, extensive technology ecosystems and work efficiency, he said. “All in all, the export controls were a failure. The facts would suggest it,” he said. “The US
The government has launched a three-pronged strategy to attract local and international talent, aiming to position Taiwan as a new global hub following Nvidia Corp’s announcement that it has chosen Taipei as the site of its Taiwan headquarters. Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday last week announced during his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei that the Nvidia Constellation, the company’s planned Taiwan headquarters, would be located in the Beitou-Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區) in Taipei. Huang’s decision to establish a base in Taiwan is “primarily due to Taiwan’s talent pool and its strength in the semiconductor
French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed gratitude to Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) for its plan to invest approximately 250 million euros (US$278 million) in a joint venture in France focused on the semiconductor and space industries. On his official X account on Tuesday, Macron thanked Hon Hai, also known globally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), for its investment projects announced at Choose France, a flagship economic summit held on Monday to attract foreign investment. In the post, Macron included a GIF displaying the national flag of the Republic of China (Taiwan), as he did for other foreign investors, including China-based
RSS