Taiwan Depository & Clearing Corporation

At its 2017 annual general meeting on June 21, TDCC approved a per-share cash dividend of NT$1.5 and stock dividend of NT$0.25 for every shareholder, among other resolutions.

Chairman & CEO Sherman Lin noted that TDCC, as a customer-oriented business, will continue to cater to the diverse needs in Taiwan’s capital market, and to remain committed to developing innovative financial technology which is in collaboration with all partners, as well as providing solutions that help customers reduce operating costs based on the principle of platform economy. Some of the initiatives that TDCC rolled out in 2016, including “digitized environment build-out,” “enhanced cross-border custody service,” “e-voting promotion,” “optimization of fund platform functions,” “money laundering prevention & query system establishment” and “promotion of corporate charity and financial education”, have had some solid results.

Notably, TDCC has broadened its business scope from B2B to B2C by launching an e-Passbook app on March 29, 2017. Since then, the app has accumulated 80k active users, who can access their passbook statements via a mobile device. In addition to the enhancement of existing functions, the app also comes with new features like message broadcast and online investor services.

Regarding the cross-border custody business, in 2016, the value of securities under custody reached NT$788.0bn, and the figure is likely to pick up to NT$2tn by end-2017.

The amendments to regulations governing issuance of dematerialized commercial paper (CP2) became effective on May 3, 2017, and TDCC will soon launch the service in 2017.

For e-voting, a government statement has required that all listed companies must provide e-voting as an option for shareholders to exercise their voting rights starting 2018. As such, TDCC will continue to promote the use of e-voting among listed companies, institutional investors and general shareholders.

FundRich, an online mutual fund sales platform invested by TDCC, became operational in 4Q16, and has become the largest online fund distribution channel in Taiwan in a very short time span, with over 10k new accounts and regular subscription contracts. FundRich targets an addition of 20k new accounts in 2017, with subscription value of over NT$10bn.

The Anti-Money Laundering & query system has accumulated 964 corporate users, including securities brokerages, bill dealers, investment trust companies and futures brokers. Since its establishment, the system has processed over 300k queries. This year, TDCC will continue to expand the data base, and make the system available to more financial and non-financial institutions.

At the 20th Asia-Pacific Central Securities Depository Group (ACG) meeting in 2016, TDCC ran for the election of members of the Executive Committee, and passed through with the most votes. Apart from that, TDCC singed a MOU of collaboration and information exchange with Kustodian Sentral Efek Indonesia (KSEI), China Central Depository & Clearing (CCDC) and Central Securities Depository of Iran (CSDI), in an effort to broad the global network of Taiwan’s securities industry.

TDCC President Ching-Li Meng also highlighted some of the major achievements in 2016, including the provision of online application of book-entry transfer and the establishment of an automated operating environment for securities firms. The settlement of TPEx-listed stocks (both money payment and securities transfer) has been synchronized to T+2 day. Meanwhile, TDCC launched more value-added services for cross-border custody, and was preparing for the issuance of dematerialized CP2. FundRich customers can now apply for bank account authorization online. The order placement apps of securities brokers now support the shareholder e-voting feature. The establishment of the Anti-Money Laundering & query system was also one of the most celebrated achievements of TDCC in 2016. Last but not least, TDCC takes pride in its fulfillment of corporate social responsibility. In 2016, TDCC organized an industry-school collaborative internship scheme and financial employment training program for disadvantaged college students. It also contributed to an athlete sponsorship program and a charity project for remote primary schools. In the future, TDCC intends to remain committed to the promotion of corporate charity and financial education.

Looking ahead, TDCC will continue to play its role as a back-office facilitator of Taiwan’s capital market, focusing to enhance service efficiency and improving the functionality of depository, clearing and settlement, and book-entry transfer for financial products . The future perspective will be “establishment of an eco-system for digitized finance 3.0,” “dematerialized issuance of commercial paper” and “Fintech application in FundRich.”