KGI Bank (凱基銀行), a unit of China Development Financial Holding Corp (CDFHC, 中華開發金控), will not share its financial technology (fintech) experimental business platform with Next Bank (將來銀行), in which it holds a 7 percent stake, as it thinks the Web-only bank should set up a different and independent model.
In its sandbox experiment that started in December last year and ended in August, KGI collaborated with Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) to deploy mobile identity authentication technology to provide loans to customers who possess no credit records and made the applications online.
The bank has gained approval from the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) to continue a pilot program from last month to March next year.
Since KGI is a shareholder of the virtual bank, it is a question if the bank would transfer its fintech service to Next Bank.
“We would keep the innovative business allowing consumers to apply for small loans via mobile devices to ourselves, while Next Bank has to run another model independently if it plans to serve this business,” CDFHC president Alan Wang (王銘陽) told the Taipei Times on the sidelines of the company’s earnings conference last week.
Given that KGI has used its own resources to set up the platform and a credit scoring model that determines an applicant’s risk factors and how much it should lend, the bank would continue to operate it, KGI Bank president Amy Tsao (曹慧姝) said.
“We believe every bank has its own lending standards, so we expect Next Bank to set up a new one itself,” Tsao added.
Next Bank director Liu I-cheng (劉奕成) yesterday said he was a bit surprised by KGI’s decision, as he thought they would be able to use KGI’s platform.
“We have not discussed this topic yet … and it might take us some time to decide if to establish another platform by ourselves. But we do think the innovative service benefits consumers and brought great convenience to all,” Liu said by telephone.
The FSC said if the two banks are to use the same platform offering loans to different consumers, it would review their business to see if they comply with regulations.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS