The Covid-19 pandemic is having an enormous impact on every industry in the world. In light of the pandemic, digital transformation in Taiwan’s financial sector is on the rise. As the trend towards digitalization is reinforcing, the competent authorities is making strides in enhancing the digital transformation of regulatory supervision of financial institutions. The goal is to spark innovation in the financial industry via digital tools. Hence, supervisory technology (SupTech) has become an important issue in the eye of the financial regulatory agency in Taiwan. To formally launch the digital regulatory framework, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has announced that FSC is entrusting Taiwan Depository & Clearing Corporation (TDCC) with an integrated digital regulatory reporting and supervision analysis system (the SupTech Platform) for Bills Finance Companies on August 13.

As the one and only Central Depository and Clearing House for short-term bills in Taiwan, TDCC has been offering issuance, transaction, clearing, and settlement services of short-term bills for over ten years. By building up the SupTech Platform for bills, TDCC will serve as the fast link between the competent authorities and bills finance companies. The SupTech Platform will introduce the new digital regulatory reporting mechanism through application programming interfaces (APIs) and relative measures to automate reporting obligations for bills finance companies. In addition, TDCC will take further steps to consolidate bills finance companies’ reporting data with granular data from other systems of different financial institutions governed by the FSC, e.g., TDCC’s short-term bills transaction data, Taipei Exchange’s (TPEx) bond issuance data, and Joint Credit Information Center’s (JCIC) credit limit data. The authorities will be able to achieve the goal of “precise supervision” by monitoring the market with the SupTech-based supervisory tools such as interactive dashboards, data visualization tools and other big data analytics solutions. The SupTech Platform is expected to be in place in Q2 2021.

“TDCC is the biggest back-office service provider in Taiwan’s capital market. We have the most diverse, most comprehensive market data. Our mission and vision have always been to put the data to effective use and improve Taiwan’s financial ecosystem. At the end of last year, we went to Europe to learn from their experience in SupTech. We did some research and paid some visits to learn sophisticated SupTech applications from other countries. We’ve also cooperated with expert to map out a localized SupTech blueprint for Taiwan after reviewing international trends. We hope to implement SupTech solutions and introduce international experience into the Taiwanese context to help the competent authorities and financial firms create more value,” said Sherman Lin, TDCC Chairman & CEO.

In the past two years, TDCC has been responding to the needs of the competent authorities and participants by using big data to provide analytics services. For example, regulatory data like investments of the insurance industry, data of Taiwan’s fund market and bill market are generated for the FSC and Central Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to conduct regulatory analyses. The said data are also available to participants for other data applications, so businesses can aim for precision marketing and management. Early this year, TDCC partnered with the Bills Finance Association of the Republic of China to build the Bill Market Management Information System as a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. The system, scheduled to be online in Q4 2020, will be ready to offer data analytics of all kinds in the bill market to bills finance companies. As these companies expand their business, the bill market will also become more prosperous.

In the post-pandemic era, TDCC will stand with the competent authorities and financial firms to keep providing comprehensive data analytics services. These services will not only increase business efficiency, but will also be very helpful for detecting black swans and grey rhinos in the market. Thus, society can stay more financially healthy, and enhance peace of mind and sense of trust in the financial market.