The exposure of Taiwanese banks, insurers and securities firms to the Ukrainian and Russian markets totaled more than NT$217 billion (US$7.74 billion) as of the end of last month, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said yesterday.
The exposure of the three industries in the two nations fell about NT$10 billion from a month earlier to NT$217.91 billion, the FSC said a day after Moscow invaded Ukraine on Thursday.
The month-on-month decline in exposure was largely due to Taiwanese life insurance companies, which cut portfolio holdings after assessing the risks, while market fluctuations affected the value of their investments, the FSC said.
The exposure of Taiwanese banks, insurers and securities firms to stock and debt markets in Russia and Ukraine is just a small fraction of their worldwide total, which was almost NT$3 trillion as of the end of last month, FSC data showed.
The local banking industry recorded lending to Russia of NT$64 million and investments in the country of NT$5.04 billion, the data showed.
As for Ukraine, lending to it across the industries was NT$3 million, the data showed.
Taiwanese life insurers’ investments in Russia totaled NT$138.2 billion as of the end of last month, while they had no investments in Ukraine, the data showed.
Non-life insurers reported no investments in Russia or Ukraine, the FSC said.
While the local securities and futures industry had no direct exposure to Russia or Ukraine, individuals held about NT$55.2 billion in Russian-based exposure after investing in local and overseas mutual funds that have assets in the county, the commission added.
Individual investments in mutual funds with assets in Ukraine totaled exposure of about NT$19.4 billion, it said.
Securities and Futures Bureau Deputy Director Kuo Chia-chun (郭佳君) said that the industry’s exposure to the two markets was relatively small.
Taiwan has only one mutual fund with investments in Russia, Kuo said.
However, the fund did not directly invest in the Moscow Exchange and instead invested in the American depositary receipts of Russian firms traded on US markets and their global depositary receipts traded on the British market, she said.
Meanwhile, Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) and Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), Taiwan’s top two financial holding firms, said that their investments in Russia as of the end of last month totaled NT$21.2 billion and NT$20 billion respectively, with no investments in Ukraine.
Their investments in Russia were focused on government bonds, the two companies said.
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