Taiwan Depository & Clearing Corporation

The Asia/ Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) is about to carry out the third round of on-site evaluations in Taiwan soon. In order to help the government establish a money-laundering prevention data base that measures up to international standards, TDCC launched a money-laundering and terrorist-financing query system on April 1, 2016. To date, the system has accumulated 6,302 subscribers, of which 1,251 are financial institutions. The query system was intended only for TDCC participants, including securities brokers, bill dealers, futures brokers, securities finance companies, and investment trust and advisory firms. However, given the resource-sharing policy of the Ministry of Justice, in 2017, TDCC gradually opened up the system to other financial institutions, such as credit cooperatives, insurers, credit card companies, financial leasing firms, e-ticket and e-payment service providers. Non-financial institutions and individuals that are required to engage in money laundering prevention according to the Money Laundering Control Act, such as lawyers, accountants, land administration agents and jewelry workshops were also among the newly added users.

TDCC expanded this database, which now holds more than two million caution list entries, including over forty thousand entries in Chinese. Users can access the sanction list (blacklist), lists of politically exposed people (PEP) and their relatives/ close associates (RCA), and the related negative news on the system in a real-time fashion. Since the expansion of user base on November 20, 2017, the system had registered more than 1.05 million online queries as of the end of April 2018.

In addition to keeping the data base up to date, TDCC also changed the access method from IC certificate to ID login, making it more convenient for financial institutions and non-financial organizations or individuals that do not have the required certificates to make use of the data base. For TDCC participants, the system offers proactive examination of client data to see if any of their clients is on the caution list. A cross-examination of new accounts and caution list updates is also provided on a weekly basis, so that the participants can enjoy a peace of mind. In consideration of the needs of other subscribers to perform a full examination from time to time, TDCC added a batch upload function, which allows users to upload a number of clients in one batch for examination, saving them a tremendous amount of time versus one client per query previously. Chairman and CEO, Sherman Lin noted that the company is a provider of integrated services, and the standardized money-laundering prevention system that it puts in place not only saves users the trouble to build their own data base, but also makes it easier for users to comply with relevant laws and regulations, which is in line with the government’s policy objective.