Financial Supervisory Council (FSC) Chairman William Tseng says that Taiwan’s financial sector should look to Southeast Asia for opportunities to expand.
During an interview with RTI on Wednesday, Tseng said that the FSC has been working to gradually amend statutes to give Taiwan’s financial sector the freedom it needs to expand into Asia.
Tseng told RTI that the past year and a half have seen results. In that time, Taiwanese banks and securities firms have been involved in four overseas merger and acquisition cases. During the same period, government policy and an abundance of funds have led to ten overseas merger and acquisition cases involving Taiwanese insurance brokers.
According to Tseng, the investments that Taiwanese financial institutions have made in Asia have been profitable. Last year, profits from investments in Asia reached US$1.1 billion, and Tseng says he believes profits will continue to grow.
Tseng said that Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Myanmar are all good options for the future expansion of Taiwanese financial institutions. Tseng said the children of Southeast Asian immigrants to Taiwan could play a big role in this expansion.
"Taiwan has several hundred-thousand new immigrants," said Tseng. "Once the children of these immigrants have grown up, they can represent all of Taiwan’s financial institutions. They can return to the places their parents originally came from, helping Taiwan’s financial institutions on the one hand and contributing to the countries their parents originally come from on the other."
However, Tseng said that Taiwan’s financial institutions must act quickly if they hope to expand into Southeast Asia. Tseng said this is because after the next three to five years, institutions from Mainland China will begin the process of merger and acquisition with local institutions.
Tseng says Taiwanese institutions that act in time can expect to begin seeing profits beginning in 2018.