Dr Thomas Huang, who has assumed the post of Chairman of the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) in Taiwan, cited six areas in which new guidance would be provided by the FSC by the end of August.
The six areas are:
- corporate governance,
- insurers’ solvency,
- green finance,
- FinTech,
- trust sector, and
- financial information security.
“Corporate governance has been improved in terms of compliance and shareholding disclosure, with former chairman Wellington Koo at the helm. It is time to move to the next phase to focus on companies’ roles in sustainable development,” Dr Huang said at a news conference, reported Taipei Times.
The FSC will also set out policies to incentivise companies to increase green finance and adopt the Equator Principle, a set of voluntary guidelines for companies to assess environmental risks in financing, he said.
Dr Huang said the commission will also review its regulatory sandbox programme and may make some changes to the rules to enable more start-ups or technology firms to use the sandbox. He would hold a meeting with representatives of the technology industry.
He added that the FSC would keep pace with global standards for the insurance industry by introducing the Insurance Capital Standard (ICS) version 2.0 in Taiwan.
The FSC will ask all insurers to re-evaluate their assets and liabilities based on the ICS version 2.0 from this year to 2024, after which it would determine whether or not to implement the global standards with moderate modifications.
Dr Thomas Huang said: “Foreign companies will continue investing in Taiwan, while some local insurers will also expand their operations to Southeast Asia. It will be beneficial for them to adopt the international standards.”
As for the coronavirus pandemic, he said that the financial regulator has three areas of focus: whether employees in the insurance industry are safe and healthy; whether insurers' operations remain normal and whether their practices are helpful to market stability.
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