HSBC Bank Taiwan Ltd (匯豐台灣商銀) has lowered the threshold of its private banking service, from individuals with assets of US$5 million to those with US$2 million, in a bid to enhance its competitiveness in the nation’s wealth management market.
The bank maintained its “Premier” service for those with assets of more than NT$3 million, private banking head Sabrina Chen (陳怡婷) told a media briefing in Taipei on Wednesday.
The changes come as HSBC Holdings PLC adjusts its wealth management business worldwide, Chen said.
The group has redefined segments of clients and merged its private banking and wealth management units in a bid to create synergy, she added.
The revised threshold is still higher than the US$1 million threshold adopted by most banks in Taiwan, she said.
Chen did not reveal the number of clients the bank has with ultra-high net worth, but said the bank is confident that its client base would grow, citing a study showing that about 600,000 Taiwanese last year had a net worth of more than US$1 million, a number expected to reach 1 million Taiwanese by 2025.
HSBC Taiwan has not considered applying to the Financial Supervisory Commission for approval of a high-asset program, which would allow it to provide clients new products such as foreign currency-denominated structured notes and derivatives, she said.
“Clients are not necessarily interested in these complicated derivatives, but they necessarily want their bank to research the products well before selling them. Generally, most of our high-net-worth clients prefer products with stable returns, rather than risky ones, so that they can see their assets grow,” she said.
The bank has improved its information system, incoporating more services into the platform for its top clients, Chen said, adding that it is the only private banking service in Taiwan that offers online services.
UNCERTAINTIES: Exports surged 34.1% and private investment grew 7.03% to outpace expectations in the first half, although US tariffs could stall momentum The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast to 3.05 percent this year on a robust first-half performance, but warned that US tariff threats and external uncertainty could stall momentum in the second half of the year. “The first half proved exceptionally strong, allowing room for optimism,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “But the growth momentum may slow moving forward due to US tariffs.” The tariff threat poses definite downside risks, although the scale of the impact remains unclear given the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s policies, Lien said. Despite the headwinds, Taiwan is likely
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
READY TO BUY: Shortly after Nvidia announced the approval, Chinese firms scrambled to order the H20 GPUs, which the company must send to the US government for approval Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) late on Monday said the technology giant has won approval from US President Donald Trump’s administration to sell its advanced H20 graphics processing units (GPUs) used to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to China. The news came in a company blog post late on Monday and Huang also spoke about the coup on China’s state-run China Global Television Network in remarks shown on X. “The US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon,” the post said. “Today, I’m announcing that the US government has approved for us