The Financial Supervisory Commission is to tighten regulations on local banks’ customer relationship managers from Jan. 1 next year following a series of cases of managers stealing money from their clients over the past two years, the commission said yesterday.
That would be the second time the commission has toughened its stance on customer relationship mangers since 2019, as the previous rule changes have not effectively stopped managers from stealing cash from their clients, the commission told a videoconference.
The commission has fined E.Sun Commercial Bank (玉山銀行), Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) and Taishin International Bank (台新銀行) for thefts committed by their customer relationship mangers since the stricter regulations took effect in 2019, commission data showed.
Photo: Wang Meng-lun, Taipei Times
The new rules would stipulate that banks should ban customer relationship managers from producing bank statements and offering them directly to clients, as the statements were often used as a tool in theft cases, the commission said.
Banks must instead send bank statements to clients by mail or e-mail, instead of via customer relationship mangers, Banking Bureau Chief Secretary Hou Li-yang (侯立洋) said.
The statements should at least include information on returns on investment programs, account balances, investment targets and traded units, so clients can check whether their customer relationship manager is lying about their investment programs, Hou added.
Some banks would need time to update their information technology and mailing systems to comply with the new rules, which is one of the reasons the new regulations would take effect next year, he said.
Under new rules, banks must inspect their customer relationship managers’ computers to see if they have produced bank statements, he said.
Some banks are already in the habit of examining the computers to prevent fraud, but not all, so the new regulations specifically demand that banks perform such examinations, Hou added.
The commission has issued fines totaling NT$163 million (US$5.83 million at the current exchange rate) on more than 10 banks for theft since 2018, and banks must strengthen the supervision of their customer relationship managers, it said.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
RSS