Taiwan’s financial regulator has said the island needs larger home-grown asset managers if it is to stand up as a regional financial centre alongside overseas rivals, reported Bloomberg.
Peng Jin-lung, who chairs the Financial Supervisory Commission, said Taiwan’s asset management sector should draw more effectively on the island’s strength in global technology and on the sizeable capital resources held by domestic financial groups
Peng said: “If Taiwan does not develop multiple asset management firms with sufficient scale, it will be difficult to compete internationally. “That limits our ability to promote Taiwan’s investment opportunities around the world.” As part of that effort, the FSC is trying to channel more mandates towards local firms. “We’re urging more domestic institutional investors to directly mandate local asset managers — either within their own financial groups or to other domestic peers — to quickly grow the industry,” Peng said. FSC data show eight Taiwanese asset managers now oversee more than T$1tn each. The two largest, Yuanta Securities Investment Trust and Cathay Securities Investment Trust, each manage more than T$2tn.
Cathay Financial Holding Co., the island’s biggest financial conglomerate, said in October that it intended over time to assign all of the more than T$7tn held by its life insurance arm to the group’s asset management business. TS Financial Holding Co. has set out a comparable arrangement. Taiwanese managers are also dealing with stronger competition from foreign firms increasing their activity in the local retail wealth market.