The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday fined Taishin International Bank (台新銀行) a record NT$30 million (US$1.07 million) for oversight failure, after its staff stole NT$347 million from customers.
The fine was much higher than the penalty of NT$20 million handed to E.Sun Commercial Bank (玉山銀行) in November last year and the NT$12 million fine to Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) in December last year for similar failures.
An E.Sun employee had stolen NT$140 million from 41 clients, while Cathay United Bank’s staff had stolen NT$17.32 million from four clients, data from the commission showed.
Photo: Wang Meng-lun, Taipei Times
Taishin Bank received the heaviest punishment not only because the NT$347 million its former employee stole from nine clients was the highest among all bank thefts, but also because the employee had done so for more than a decade, from 2008 to last year, indicating the bank’s lax internal controls, the commission said.
The former employee, a customer relationship manager surnamed Chou (周) at a branch in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和), asked his clients to sign blank transfer forms and then used them to transfer their money to the bank accounts of his friends or his sister, Banking Bureau Deputy Director-General Huang Kuang-hsi (黃光熙) told a videoconference.
Although some of Chou’s clients applied to reconcile their bank accounts, the bank failed to save the records of account activity for inspection, Huang said.
When the bank in 2019 discovered the suspicious cash movement, Chou’s manager only asked him to write a report, but failed to continue monitoring him, Huang added.
The commission also faulted Taishin’s management, saying the bank had cut the branch’s workforce and was overly focused on how much sales its employees could generate, he said.
“Sales had a weighting of 40 percent in an employee’s performance assessment in 2016... Although the weighting was lowered in the following years, it was still comparatively higher than at other banks,” he said.
That might explain why when Chou secretly moved funds from his clients to other accounts, those responsible for checking did not spot the illegal activity, Huang said.
The FSC suspended Taishin Bank’s deputy head of consumer banking, surnamed Lin (林), for three months, saying Lin was responsible for the poor management as he had designed the employee performance assessment, Huang said.
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) yesterday announced the launch of the TSMC-UTokyo Lab to promote advanced semiconductor research, education and talent development. The lab is TSMC’s first laboratory collaboration with a university outside Taiwan, the company said in a statement. The lab would leverage “the extensive knowledge, experience, and creativity” of both institutions, the company said. It is located in the Asano Section of UTokyo’s Hongo, Tokyo, campus and would be managed by UTokyo faculty, guided by directors from UTokyo and TSMC, the company said. TSMC began working with UTokyo in 2019, resulting in 21 research projects,
Ashton Hall’s morning routine involves dunking his head in iced Saratoga Spring Water. For the company that sells the bottled water — Hall’s brand of choice for drinking, brushing his teeth and submerging himself — that is fantastic news. “We’re so thankful to this incredible fitness influencer called Ashton Hall,” Saratoga owner Primo Brands Corp’s CEO Robbert Rietbroek said on an earnings call after Hall’s morning routine video went viral. “He really helped put our brand on the map.” Primo Brands, which was not affiliated with Hall when he made his video, is among the increasing number of companies benefiting from influencer
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) yesterday expressed a downbeat view about the prospects of humanoid robots, given high manufacturing costs and a lack of target customers. Despite rising demand and high expectations for humanoid robots, high research-and-development costs and uncertain profitability remain major concerns, Lam told reporters following the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Taoyuan. “Since it seems a bit unworthy to use such high-cost robots to do household chores, I believe robots designed for specific purposes would be more valuable and present a better business opportunity,” Lam said Instead of investing in humanoid robots, Quanta has opted to invest
RSS