A local COVID-19 outbreak took a toll on the payroll of financial companies, with their employee numbers shrinking by nearly 10,000 in the first half of this year from a year earlier, a survey by industry groups showed on Monday.
A total of 9,372 employees at local banks and life insurance companies quit as social distancing restrictions made it even more difficult to meet targets set by companies or supervisors, according to statistics from the Financial Supervisory Commission’s Banking Bureau and the Life Insurance Association of the Republic of China (壽險公會).
Employee numbers decreased even as domestic financial conglomerates’ aggregate net profit approached NT$400 billion (US$14.38 billion) in the first seven months of the year, surpassing the record posted for the whole of last year.
First-year premiums tumbled 11 percent year-on-year in the first six months, as life insurance agents had difficulty meeting customers in person to promote sales and customers avoided visiting banks, the bureau and the insurers’ association said.
Banks also cut the number of on-duty employees after the Central Epidemic Command Center in May imposed a nationwide level 3 COVID-19 alert to lower infection risks, they added.
That explains why the number of registered life insurance agents dropped by 12,000 to 387,212 as of June, while banking employees declined by 1,228 to about 177,000, the data showed.
Social distancing measures have increased costs for selling wealth management products and gaining credit card customers, while raising the difficulty of reaching high net worth clients, banking officials said.
The trend is unlikely to change in the near term as financial institutes embrace digital transformation to stay viable in the post-pandemic era, analysts have said.
US crude futures on Friday topped US$80 a barrel for the first time since November 2014 as a global energy crisis boosts demand at a time when OPEC+ producers are keeping supplies tight. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for November delivery popped above the key psychological level before pulling back and closing up 1.34 percent at US$79.35 a barrel, gaining 4.57 percent from a week earlier. Brent crude for December delivery increased 0.54 percent a barrel to US$82.39, up 3.92 percent from a week earlier. This week brought many indications that supplies would remain constrained: Saudi Aramco said a global natural gas shortage was
Units of Intel Corp and Samsung Electronics Co are targeting to resume full operations of their Ho Chi Minh City plants by the end of next month, a move that could provide relief to global supply chains. Saigon Hi-Tech Park is helping its tenants, many of which are running at about 70 percent capacity, to operate fully next month, park deputy manager Le Bich Loan said in a phone interview. She did not elaborate on the steps the park is taking, particularly efforts at bringing back workers who fled to home provinces. The Ho Chi Minh City unit of Nidec Sankyo Corp,
CHIP CRUNCH: Apple’s woes show that even the king of the technology world is not immune from global shortages made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic Apple Inc is likely to slash its projected iPhone 13 production targets for this year by as many as 10 million units as prolonged chip shortages hit its flagship product, people with knowledge of the matter said. The company had expected to produce 90 million new iPhone models in the final three months of this year, but it is now telling manufacturing partners that the total would be lower because Broadcom Inc and Texas Instruments Inc are struggling to deliver enough components, the people said. Apple gets display parts from Texas Instruments, while Broadcom is its longtime supplier of wireless components. One Texas
Down a dusty farm track in Chilean wine country, behind a wooden gate wrapped in chains, forestry experts are nursing a plantation of saplings whose bark holds the promise of potent vaccines. Quillay trees, technically known as Quillaja saponaria, are rare evergreens native to Chile that have long been used by the indigenous Mapuche people to make soap and medicine. In the past few years, they have also been used to make a highly successful vaccine against shingles and the world’s first malaria vaccine, as well as foaming agents for products in the food, beverage and mining industries. Now two saponin molecules,
RSS