E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控) aims to double its assets to NT$6 trillion (US$215.12 billion) in the next decade and hopes to boost its financial metrics via digitalization, the company told an investors’ conference in Taipei yesterday.
Its flagship unit, E.Sun Commercial Bank (玉山銀行), launched in 1992, took 18 years to acquire NT$1 trillion of assets, seven years to reach NT$2 trillion and another three-and-a-half years to hit NT$3 trillion, E.Sun Commercial Bank chairman Joseph Huang (黃男州) said.
“It seems that the pace [of asset accumulation] is faster,” Huang said. “We hope to add another NT$3 trillion in assets in the next decade.”
Photo: Kelson Wang, Taipei Times
The bank would enlarge its assets mainly through organic growth, but it would also look for good targets for mergers and acquisitions (M&A), he said.
While E.Sun Financial’s M&A targets have focused on banks, such as Kaohsiung Business Bank (高雄企銀) and Cambodia-based Union Commercial Bank PLC, with its increased capital, it would now seek opportunities in the securities and insurance sectors, he said.
E.Sun Commercial Bank is evaluating the policies of Web-only insurance firms, but has not made a decision to invest in them, Huang said.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) in December last year said that it would allow companies to set up Web-based life or property insurance entities, but they must present an innovative and viable business model.
E.Sun Financial, which is to celebrate its 30th anniversary this year, has set several goals for the next decade, including lifting its return on equity to 12 percent annually on average from 11 percent, raising the ratio of profit at overseas branches to 30 percent from 20 percent and increasing the ratio of net fee income to net revenue to 40 percent from 36 percent, Huang said.
E.Sun Financial also aims to reduce its cost-to-income ratio to 50 percent from 58 percent, counting on digitalization to help reduce administrative costs and boost efficiency, he said.
E.Sun Securities Co (玉山證券) has deployed artificial intelligence to help review account applications and quotas for margin trading, cutting the process to five minutes from 50, the parent company said.
E.Sun Financial has an upbeat outlook for this year in light of potential interest rate hikes, recovering private consumption and strong lending momentum, Huang said.
Credit card consumption fell 14.6 percent year-on-year to NT$455 billion last year due to withering private consumption, but it expects the segment to regain momentum and reach NT$500 billion this year, Huang said.
Rate hikes would help banks garner more net interest income, which accounts for about 45 percent of E.Sun Bank’s total net revenue, while the bank also expects an 8 percent annual rise in lending, he said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS