The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) imposed fines totaling NT$334 million (US$12.06 million) on financial companies last year, a record, mainly due to a series of thefts by customer-relations staff, commission data showed.
It was the second consecutive year that such fines surpassed NT$300 million, after NT$326 million in 2020, the data showed.
The Banking Bureau last year imposed NT$112.9 million in fines, up 29 percent from a year earlier as it punished several banks for contraventions of the Banking Act (銀行法), breaches that were exposed after customer-relations staff stole money from clients, the data showed.
The FSC in July fined Taishin International Bank
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) on Tuesday fined three banks, whose employees or sales agents stole money from clients, NT$20 million (US$722,335) in total, after it had warned that it would impose heavier fines on banks for such misconduct.
The commission fined CTBC Bank (中信銀行) NT$14 million, Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行) NT$4 million and Bank of Panhsin (板信銀行) NT$2 million, it said.
CTBC Bank was fined the most because the amount of money stolen by its sales agents NT$230 million was higher than the NT$2.49 million in the Bank SinoPac case and the Bank of Panhsin’s NT$4.3 million, Banking Bureau Chief
Yuan deposits held by local banks last month rose 0.26 percent to 236.03 billion yuan (US$37.08 billion), ending three straight months of decline, although local retail investors continued to trim positions, the central bank said yesterday.
The slight change prompted the bank to start treating yuan stakes as common foreign-currency deposits under its management, and it said the monthly news briefings on yuan deposit data would end next year.
Yuan deposits at domestic banking units shed 0.19 percent to 202.83 billion yuan, but grew 3.11 percent to 33.19 billion at Taiwanese offshore units, the central bank said.
The movements came as corporate and
SinoPac Holdings Co (永豐金控) has gained patents for its artificial-intelligence (AI) image recognition technology, which could help its banking unit save at least 1,000 hours per year in examining credit documents, it said yesterday.
The company in July applied for 10 patents for its AI image recognition system and the Intellectual Property Office approved them on Thursday last week.
Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行) has connected the AI image recognition system to its core information system to identify credit documents provided by its debtors, the bank said in a statement.
As many of its debtors are private power stations that sell their output to Taiwan
Interest rates for new loans at the nation’s five major state-run banks stood at 1.224 percent last month, down 0.031 percentage points from August, as pricing competition sharpened, the central bank said on Friday.
The monetary policymaker compared the lending rates of Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行), Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行), Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行), Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行) and First Commercial Bank (第一銀行), and found that smaller lenders tend to take cues from state-run peers when setting their own rates.
The central bank attributed the downturn to an increase in fresh lending to government agencies and large corporations, which have