Best bank: CTBC Bank
CTBC Bank has cemented its position in Taiwan’s best bank over the past year. Driven by its dual track digital innovation and environmental, social and governance (ESG) based transformation, the bank achieved a record net profit of NT$41.3 billion ($1.3 billion) in 2023, with a cost-to-income ratio of 55.16% and a return on equity of 11.9%, the highest among its peers. Revenue and pre-tax profit grew by 16% and 12%, respectively.
The bank also achieved strong new customer acquisition across various business lines, including internet and mobile banking users, high net-worth customers and trade finance.
CTBC Bank includes a wide range of assets and investments in its sustainability initiative. In 2023, the bank provided over NT$270 billion in ESG responsible financing, a 16% increase from the end of 2022.
The bank’s ESG Portfolio Lending platform enables large enterprises to deposit green funds and apply the interest differential to green loans for their suppliers that adopt ESG initiatives. In 2023, CTBC Bank initiated the first NT$2 billion ESG Portfolio Lending in the Greater China region.
The bank’s global presence, with over 370 outlets in 14 countries, is a significant advantage. As more Taiwanese enterprises expand internationally, the bank’s overseas profit contribution accounted for 37% of its overall profits in 2023, a 30% year-on-year increase.
The digital transformation initiatives have yielded strong results, particularly in supporting Taiwan’s small and medium-sized enterprises. Over 55.7% of the bank’s SME customers are digitally active and 60.9% of new bank customers are onboarded via electronic know your customer checks. The Payment Facilitation app had cut point of sales (POS) setup and maintenance time and costs by 90% for over 21,000 POS devices by the end of 2023.
Best investment bank: Citi
The award for Taiwan’s best investment bank goes to Citi this year. The bank has a leading position in the league tables across all categories, a testament to its longstanding client relationships in the market.
Over the year, Citi was involved in four equity capital market deals, totaling $1.7 billion. It served as the sole global coordinator on all three Taiwan global depositary receipt offerings in 2023, reinforcing its position as the preferred investment bank for Taiwanese companies raising capital internationally.
The US firm worked on four M&A deals with a combined value of $5.2 billion in 2023. A notable example was Wistron’s $125 million sale of its smart devices manufacturing facility in India to Tata Electronics. Citi served as the exclusive financial adviser to Wistron, building on work on a previous $140 million block trade in 2021, where it acted as the sole bookrunner.
Completed M&A deals include Citi’s own $3.4 billion sale of its Taiwan consumer banking business to DBS and Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC)’s $737 million acquisition of a 20% stake in OYAK Denizli and 60% of Cimpor. Citi served as the exclusive financial adviser to TCC, initiating strategic discussions with the acquiree and continuing its role as a trusted partner on TCC’s transformation since 2018.
Best international bank: DBS
DBS worked on several key deals in Taiwan in 2023. It acted as the sole bridge loan provider to WT Microelectronics (WM), in addition to being mandated as one of the lead arrangers for the take-out syndicated loan. It was also debt financing provider for WTM’s acquisition of Future Electronics. The $3.8 billion 100% cash deal was the first large cross-border M&A deal in the semiconductor distributor industry in Taiwan. The bank also acted as the sole lender for a $380 million bridge facility to support AcBel Polytech’s acquisition of ABB’s power division.
The bank launched its global cash management tool, RAPID, during the review period. This integrates banking capabilities between DBS and its clients’ enterprise resource planning systems.
DBS reported a 59% year-on-year increase in total revenue in Taiwan for 2023, including a 50% increase in loan balances, a 60% rise in deposit balances and a five-fold jump in credit card issuance.
Best digital bank: Cathay United Bank
Cathay United Bank improved its digital customer service last year and employed artificial intelligence and big data tools to better understand its customers’ credit metrics. This resulted in record digital growth for the bank, with digital user penetration up by nearly 50% over 2022.
The bank launched its online mortgage in 2023, with customers able to complete the entire process digitally. The credit analysis system allows for automated reviews and by the end of 2023 over 75% of mortgages could be automatically approved.
The bank upgraded its customer service systems; and it has also invested in upgrading its risk control systems by optimizing its revenue and risk prediction platform.
Digital user penetration increased by 42% over the year and customers performing digital transactions grew by 28%. Digital income grew by 36% and its digital customer acquisition rate increased by 394%.
Best bank for SMEs: E.Sun Bank
E.Sun Bank launched its traceable agricultural product (TAP) loan project last year. As part of this, it partnered with the ministry of agriculture to hold policy promotion and experience sharing meetings for traceability certification in Taipei and Tainan. The aim is to encourage more operators to join the traceability certification programme. Since its launch in second quarter of 2023, the TAP loan project has provided funds to around 10 SMEs, with a loan balance of approximately NT$62 million ($1.9 million).
Another loan project launched by E.Sun Bank was with the FamilyMart convenience store franchise. The FamilyMart project is the first to apply sustainable performance-linked loans to a franchise industry in Taiwan. In less than a year, the FamilyMart project has provided operating capital to approximately 50 franchisees, with a loan balance of around NT$83 million.
A total of 5,600 applications were received for post-pandemic revitalization through E.Sun Bank’s post-pandemic revitalization and low-carbon project. These amounted to NT$51.5 billion. Around 1,423 applications were received for low-carbon and smart transformation loans, amounting to NT$27.9 billion.
Best bank for ESG: Taipei Fubon Bank
Taipei Fubon Bank focused on developing its green financing offering in 2023, along with implementing sustainability measures in its own operations.
Its green finance business is now $18.27 billion in size and the bank has instituted a target of $25.2 billion by 2030, which would represent 38% growth over in the next seven years. Taipei Fubon Bank has worked hard to develop a suite of sustainability-linked products including green loans, sustainability-linked loans, project financing for renewable energy, green bonds and green mortgages. And the bank was the number-one bookrunner in Taiwan for renewable energy loans in 2023.
The bank has implemented new and more restrictive policy measures on its involvement in banking activities for industries with relatively high greenhouse gas emissions. It is also in the process of creating a comprehensive system to identify clients’ environmental, social and governance transition phases and partner with them to see those transitions through.
Best bank for corporate responsibility: HSBC
HSBC focused its corporate responsibility efforts on sustainability and skill empowerment programmes during 2023.
The bank held its Climate Change Response and Vulnerable Family Empowerment programmes for local farmers and economically disadvantaged families. These teach participants eco-friendly farming and business skills. It also held five green farming exhibitions and six farmer activities during its Sustaining Taipei City: Recreating Energy from Nature programme. This helped initiate carbon sink research to increase carbon storage in wetlands and promote wetland biodiversity.
HSBC also launched its 21st Century Skills development programme, which involved workshops for high school students and teachers with the aim of developing future talent for the financial industry. It continued its Future Skills Development programme for youth from underprivileged families in rural areas of Taiwan, holding 95 courses for children from economically disadvantaged families. The programme saw 2,205 graduates, with 1,372 achieving high school qualifications, 566 obtaining college qualifications and 16 earning master’s degrees.
Best bank for diversity and inclusion: Bank SinoPac
Bank SinoPac launched important initiatives supporting migrant workers in 2023.
This involved its Bridging Border Migrant Remittance solution, which enables migrant workers to securely remit funds to their home countries through a network of convenience stores across Taiwan via virtual accounts and automated clearing house integration with the bank’s application programming interface.
The second initiative its ADMigrant Pay product. This improves the bank’s cross-border remittance services for migrant workers and, in collaboration with EUI, Bank SinoPac deployed ADM terminals directly in the areas densely populated by migrant workers, such as dormitories, factories, and transportation hubs. The terminals and the app support multiple languages and accept small change, allowing workers to make cash payments back home by simply scanning a QR code through EUI’s app.
Best bank for corporates: CTBC Bank
CTBC Bank spent 2023 improving its transaction services offering, which drove significant growth in its corporate business.
The bank launched its CTBC Connect Integrated Financial Solution, which enabled its corporate customers to initiate payments from their enterprise resource planning system, access real-time account information via application programming interfaces (APIs) and perform account reconciliation automatically. It generated 30 million API transactions over the year.
Another launch was the bank’s iTrust platform. This has online FX and trade finance functions and supports multiple entities with a single architecture and infrastructure that can be applied in multiple countries.
On the lending front the bank was lead arranger in 106 deals, of which 70% were overseas transactions. It worked on Project Hai Long, the biggest offshore wind project financing in terms of capacity and debt size – NT$117 billion ($3.6 billion) – in Asia Pacific.
