Accompanied by FSC Chairman Wellington Koo, Minister of Finance Su, Minister of the Interior Hsu, Director Chen of the Anti-Money Laundering Office, Executive Yuan, and Executive Yuan spokesperson, Kolas Yotaka, Premier Su visited Taiwan Cooperative Bank’s head office on January 17th, 2019, learning about the bank''s anti-money laundering and anti-fraud measures and its implementation of Customer Due Diligence (CDD).
     During the inspection process, with respect to transactions such as account opening, deposit and remittance, Premier Su learned how and why the bank asks questions and asks its customers to provide relevant documents. He emphasized that it is necessary for banks to implement anti-money laundering and anti-fraud measures to protect people''s property and to maintain social order. Premier Su gave high praise to the efforts of staff. However, he said, deposits, withdrawals, and remittances are daily transactions handled by the public and, with the Chinese New Year approaching, people’s need for such transactions will be higher than usual; as most of these transactions are people’s normal financial activities, it is, therefore, the measures shall be taken according to Risk-based Approach, that is, too strict or too loose is not appropriate. Banks should aim to be effective and take due regards, try their best to avoid undue obstruction on normal transactions in the process of implementing CDD work, he said.    
Therefore, the Premier hopes that the FSC continues to promote the following four simplified measures for implementation of CDD by banks.
1. For Deposit Slip transactions (for those without their passbooks) less than NTD 500,000, if financial institutions have CDD information of a customer and already know the customer, it is not necessary to ask the customer to show an ID document.
2. For those who carry out fund transfer to others’ accounts in the same financial institution, since the financial institution already has the customers’ information, the financial institution may not need to require the customers to provide their identity information.
3. For those who pay taxes and fees to government, such transactions may not apply money laundering regulations.
4. Most financial transactions are normal trading activities. Anti-money laundering measures should not cause inconvenience for the public and be consistent with the principle of proportionality.
Regarding the instructions of Premier Su, FSC Chairman Koo said that the FSC will actively promote them. He further explained that the purpose of anti-money laundering is to ensure the smooth operation of all legitimate economic and financial activities, and to realize the common interests of the people, enterprises, financial institutions and the government. Moreover, the implementation of anti-money laundering should apply risk-based approach, to allow resources to be effectively distributed and to maximize the effect. The FSC has already required financial institutions to handle the updating and periodic review of low-risk customers in the least disruptive manner. In the future, under the principle announced by Premier Su, related measures for simplifying administration and the convenience of the public will continue being promoted. In addition, reference in the form of FAQ on common normal trading situations will be provided for financial institutions to allow normal transactions to proceed smoothly, he said.