Taiwan Urges Banks to Add More Branches in China, Southeast Asia

Taiwan’s financial regulator urged the island’s banks to open more branches in China, pushing them to expand more quickly in the world’s fastest-growing major economy as competition erodes returns at home.

“If Taiwan’s finance companies can’t raise their competitiveness, they’ll remained buried in a domestic market that’s overbanked and rife with price undercutting,” Lee Jih-chu, deputy chairwoman at the Financial Supervisory Commission, said in an interview in Taipei on Aug. 26. “That’s our biggest concern right now.”