6.2 Financial Education

Based on PSC’s core competencies in business operations, we are dedicated to promoting financial education to fulfill local needs and embody our corporate values.

6.2.1 Financial Education Endeavors

The First Financial Lesson For Children in Eastern Taiwan - Financial Education Train Brings Love to Remote Areas

The improved Suhua Highway opening to traffic has enhanced the accessibility to eastern Taiwan and shortened the distance between remote areas and cities, while exacerbating the issues of rural–urban gap for indigenous children in eastern Taiwan. We have seen these issues.

By combining our core business and expertise in finance, we taught the concept of financial management to more than 10 indigenous students at Wuta Elementary School in an entertaining manner and provided the first financial lesson for children in Eastern Taiwan. No matter whether they choose to go to the city or stay in the future, we helped them get ready for the cultural shock of the city and develop a skill set to be the master of their life. We cultivated their ability to think and make decisions independently and plan for their future as early as possible to realize their dreams, thereby developing correct financial management concepts and values at a young age as a way for us to contribute to financial education.

We also filmed a documentary of this project entitled The First Financial Lesson For Children in Eastern Taiwan with “making good use of story and creating influence” as the core concept, to arouse everyone's awareness of education in remote areas through PSC’s sustainable influence. We even won the Bronze Award at the 4th PwC CSR Impact Awards as the first-time participant.

6.2.2 Paid Trainee Program

Sales Personnel/Securities Specialists

Bridging the gap between academia and the industry, shortening the uncomfortable period of adaptation to the workplace, and increasing internship opportunities for universities and vocational colleges in remote areas will be our goals of implementing the trainee program.

In terms of business trainee programs, we have expanded the trainee program since 2013 and worked with 38 domestic universities and vocational colleges since then. A total of 193 people have completed internship courses, and 35 of them have continued to stay at the Company for 6 consecutive years. During the 13-week internship courses, we train participants according to the internship schedule; they learn professional knowledge, participate in projects, receive on-the-job training, and take license examinations, thereby implementing the mentoring system. We keep a log of the internship process in detail, adjust courses depending on students' learning condition, and assess their learning through mid-term and final exams to ensure the best learning effect. In addition, we provide trainees with an honorarium of NT$500 per day and group accident insurance of NT$2 million. If they complete the training and remain as full-time employees, they will receive an early-bird bonus of NT$3,600.

We have implemented the paid trainee program since 2013 and we have trained a number of outstanding talents. Either the acquisition of professional licenses, the retention of sales personnel, and business performance, employees recruited through this program are more outstanding than those from other recruitment channels.

Departmental Workplace Experience

We have shifted our focus of the trainee program to the workplace experience in all departments since 2018, expanding the scope of students’ training, including not only the business field but brokerage business, back-office administration, and proprietary trading to increase human resources and cultivate financial talents through our core business. Our workplace experience training structure is divided into two dimensions:

6.2.3 Industry-Academia Collaboration Program

In 2019, PSC upgraded financial education to an advanced version of the industry-academia collaboration program, marking a new milestone in this respect. Through research projects and thesisbased research projects, the program selected suitable candidates as per their specialties within the scope of innovative services, financial engineering models, data analysis, client investment behavior prediction, marketing activities, and other relevant financial issues to join the program. To cultivateoutstanding talents, students in this program were provided with opportunities for hands-on experience during weekdays for a semester under a mentoring model as they received guidance from their professors and advisors in the industry. At the end of the semester, they gave a presentation of their learning in this program.

The industry-academia collaboration program provides an incentive of NT$50,000 to students for research projects and NT$80,000 for research theses. During the research period, we provide group insurance, an incentive of NT10,000 to 30,000 to each of the top three presentations, and guarantee those with outstanding performance with job opportunities.

6.2.4 Investment Banking Practice Courses

To adapt to the trend of financial digital transformation and bridge the gap between theory and practice, PSC collaborated with the Department of Finance at Chung Cheng University to offer a semester-long investment banking practicum. In 2022, a total of 14 students enrolled in and completed this course. Through nine themed lectures on various practices, the course provided students with insights into the current state and future trends of Taiwan’s capital market. It also equipped them with practical skills and theoretical knowledge applicable to financial market operations, helping them explore potential career paths. Moreover, the course featured the practical experience of finance industry professionals, sharing real-world scenarios and insights to enhance students' competitiveness in the field.

6.2.5 Mock Competition

We organized an outstanding investment competition with Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology to allow students to apply what they have learned through the competition

Outstanding Investment Competition

The Outstanding Investment Competition provides high school and college students with the opportunity to learn about equity financing through a virtual investment platform. The competition includes investment targets such as publicly traded stocks, index exchange-traded funds (ETFs), as well as margin trading and short selling of stocks. The goal is to encourage students to actively learn and improve their investment skills. Furthermore, the initiative aims to promote a culture of financial literacy among students by hosting the competition regularly. In 2022, a total of 1,329 high school, vocational school, and university students from across Taiwan participated in the competition for a prize pool of NT$ 50,000.