I realise there was a similar post about this earlier in the year but it didn’t really scratch my particular itch.
Please see if you can help.
I am an ARC holder, UK citizen and working here in Taiwan for the foreseeable future. I want to invest in local ETFs.
It seems to be impossible. Every step of the way I am being told to call another number or no we don’t do that here etc. I have the feeling of being palmed off because dealing a foreigner is hassle they don’t want. I get that, but it is becoming genuinely annoying now.
Can anyone tell me how to do it? Or who with? A name? A branch?
Follow-up on this; I want it to be easy. I have a fubon account (and others).
Theoretically I can make lump sum payments of, for example, SPY. The Fubon app doesn’t let me, and says my risk preference isn’t right. I redo the risk assessment survey, and I get the desired level. I try to purchase again. It once again tells me my risk preference isn’t right for this purchase, showing me a much more conservative profile than the assessment I just did.
This sort of corresponds to what the person at Fubon suspected, which came down to “On paper, you can do this, but you’re a foreigner, and they’ll find a way to stop you.”
Am I doing something wrong with Fubon? Has anyway succeeded with this with any of the local banks?
The harmless explanation could be that it takes some days for the updated risk level to become effective. So try again on Monday and see if it works then.
In that time, though, you would probably already have opened an IBKR account, though…
I don’t think that’s the case: I’ve redone the assessment a couple of times, getting a “better” score, and then as soon as I try to buy anything, it reverts to a more conservative score that won’t let me buy anything.
Caveat: getting these all set up in the first place was a major bureaucratic pain; and then changing things over to the new APRC number a few years back was an additional pain that may have broken connections between accounts.
Follow-up: @qwert_zuiop was correct above; after waiting a few days, the updated risk level did indeed become effective. So I was able to purchase with Fubon.
Within Fubon’s app, which at least has a decent amount of English: maybe there’s an easy way to buy Taiwanese ETFs. I couldn’t find it. I was able to transfer TWD to a USD account (within the app), and with those USD, I was able to buy a Blackrock stock. As best I can tell, I have to buy a full share / stock (sorry, my vocab sucks for this), so for example with SPY that means spending multiples of USD$765.
I had never set up a USD account with Fubon, but I remember years ago I spent a long time setting up an international account for a British pounds check my father gave me. I don’t know if that long-unused account was a prerequisite for transferring money to USD.
Yuanta’s app seems to be more “useful” but has basically no English. I was able to purchase at more sensible amounts, and in the Taiwan market. My sister-in-law has twice walked me through all this and I’m slowly figuring it out, but it still intuitively feels like I’m stuffing money through a slot in the wall and hoping something positive will have happened to it when it comes time to use it.
Plenty of people here post all kinds of stuff about the marvels they do with the markets, and good for them, but I still don’t get the process. I assume they have a trust and confidence level with using the apps or websites that I have yet to reach.
Back to the original question: “How to do this”, in my case–which has only met very limited success so far!–is have a sister-in-law who works in finance and is able to take you to Yuanta bank a couple of times and walk you through the process, and then walk you through again, and is infinitely patient with all the roadblocks (both bureaucratic and deriving from my obtuseness) put up in the way.
Thank you for your service. I will attempt to marry into your family at the first opportunity. I am still local ETFless but, after almost giving up, I will try again next week.