In support of promoting the government measures of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) to securities companies, Taipei Exchange (TPEx) will continue to host a series of seminars on the subject this year. In the first seminar, "Seminar of AML/CFT for High-Level Managers from Securities Companies" took place on Mar. 9. TPEx is looking forward to see securities companies build the concept of AML/CFT soon and accommodate it into their enterprise culture. In this seminar, TPEx received warm responses from those over than 70 participants of high-level managers from securities companies.

As the moderator of the seminar, Bing-Jing Huang, Deputy CEO of TPEx, indicated that the business of securities companies are closely related to AML/CFT. To help the high-level managers from securities companies understanding the government measures associated with their business, TPEx invited two keynote speakers. The first one is Tsai Pi-chung, Political Deputy Minister of Ministry of Justice and Director of Anti-Money Laundering Office in Executive Yuan, and the other is an officer from Securities and Futures Bureau. Their talks focused on conveying the direction and content of the current governmental policies, how to form the enterprise culture complied with AML/CFT, and improving the execution ability of securities companies. It is the hope of this seminar that securities companies can work together to improve the ability of AML/CFT of our nation and thus pass the APG (The Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering) mutual evaluation.

In the speech of the officer from Securities and Futures Bureau, she emphasized the serious influence on the financial industry in our nation if Taiwan fail to pass the third-round APG mutual evaluation. She appealed to securities companies that they should take into account this issue severely. She also highlighted some important supervision points and provided some real cases to illustrate the defects or the problems of securities companies on AML/CFT issues. At the end, she addressed that the culture formation of securities companies is the foundation of AML/CFT and hoped the board members and high-level mangers of securities companies can fully support this policy.

Next, Tsai Pi-chung, Political Deputy Minister of Ministry of Justice, analyzed the international trend of AML/CFT. To conform with the international standard, the job of AML/CFT is crucial for the financial industry and economic development in Taiwan. Consequently, Anti-Money Laundering Office was established in Executive Yuan and its goals are promoting the concept of AML/CFT to all citizens, aiding financial institutions to implement cash flow tracking system, and finally ensuring to pass APG evaluations. In addition, he explained that the laws about AML/CFT had been modified such that the possibility of leading to prosecution is increased, which can facilitate international cooperation and bring a sounder tracking system of cash flows, as well as to strengthen the AML/CFT framework, how to implement them in practice is the key to success. In the future, he hoped the measures of AML/CFT can take effect smoothly regarding the aspects of developing sound financial environment, reinforcing the intermediary function of financial institutions, and cultivating anti-money laundering experts.

Thereafter, seminar attendees enthusiastically asked a lot of questions, the speakers and TPEx made suggestions and exchanged views on the subjects of policy promotion, culture formation, financial supervision, and practical implementation. This seminar was a great success and is expected to bring the AML practices in Taiwan in line with international standards and lift the AML and compliance performance of our securities companies to the next level.