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Based on Taiwanese banks’ expansion to Asian countries in recent years, we examine thoroughly the status of their overseas operation, particularly in ASEAN countries. We hope to provide some insights to Taiwanese government for policy making and to Taiwanese banks for assessments and developments of expansion to ASEAN countries. This research covers the followings: Taiwanese banks’ overseas expansion strategies, the current expansion progress, ASEAN countries’ economy and banking industry, Taiwanese banks’ overseas profitability, especially in ASEAN, a regression analysis to find out factors influencing the profitability in ASEAN countries, and difficulties of Taiwanese banks doing business in ASEAN.
In this research, we mainly use these three methods: interviewing top and middle-level managers at Taiwanese banks, doing regression analysis and reviewing literatures.
These are four main findings in this research. Firstly, in terms of investment, both Taiwanese banks’ investment cases and amounts increased significantly when Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) started to urge them to expand Asia presence, especially in ASEAN countries. Secondly, Taiwanese banking industry’s dependability to overseas business increase gradually in recent years, that helps to reduce the damage of excessive competition of banking industry in Taiwan. Thirdly, in ASEAN countries, Taiwanese subsidiary banks’ ROA is better than its parent banks’ as a whole, but the subsidiary banks’ performance was getting worse, as a result the ROA difference between subsidiary banks and parent banks narrowed during the past few years; in term of ROE, Taiwanese parent banks performed better than its subsidiary banks in ASEAN. Fourthly, we find out the factors influencing the profitability status of Taiwanese banks doing business in ASEAN countries through regression models. The independent variables in which can be divided into three categories, the macroeconomic factors between Taiwan and ASEAN countries, the financial environment of ASEAN countries as well as Taiwanese banks individual factors. The result shows that ASEAN countries’ interest rate spread (lending rate minus deposit rate), average ROE of banking industry in ASEAN countries and the difference of GDP growth rate between ASEAN countries and Taiwan are the three factors providing positive significant effects to Taiwanese subsidiaries in ASEAN.
In conclusion, we suggest that Taiwanese banks continue to expand to ASEAN, but mainly to unsaturated markets, simultaneously target to the local people rather than only Taiwanese companies. Moreover, compared to traditional subsidiary banks and branches, we suggest Taiwanese banks to enter into ASEAN market by the form of micro-finance institution, which we believe would be more in line for local people’s needs.
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