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On March 11, 2026, CIEL Deputy Director Professor Chao-Hung Chen was invited to participate in an academic exchange jointly organized by National Taiwan University and Kyoto University. During the session titled “Low Fertility, Aging Population, and the Law,” he delivered a presentation titled “Elderly Finance and Challenges to Financial Consumer Protection,” examining emerging challenges to financial consumer protection in an aging society from the perspectives of financial law and regulatory practice.

As Taiwan’s population continues to age rapidly, the number of elderly investors and retirees is expected to grow significantly, increasing the demand for elderly finance, namely financial services designed for elderlies. Deputy Director Chen noted that existing financial consumer protection tools largely rely on Know Your Customer (KYC) , product rating and product disclosure. However, in the context of elder customers, these tools may be less effective due to degration in physical, sensory, or mental capacity. At the same time, a regulatory dilemma arises as to whether elder customers should necessarily be considered unsuitable for highly speculative investment products, since investment decisions remain closely related to personal financial planning and individual autonomy.

In practice, financial institutions may strengthen the identification of and assistance to elder customers through staff training, the creation of a friendly service environment, continuous communication, and proper record-keeping. These measures can help prevent fraud while also managing potential legal risks.

Deputy Director Chen concluded that demand for elderly finance will continue to increase over the next two to three decades. Accordingly, the financial consumer protection framework will need to be adjusted and further refined. Moving forward, more effective institutional designs will require interdisciplinary collaboration and the sharing of international experiences.

On March 11, 2026, CIEL Chief Executive Officer Professor Chung-Chia Huang was invited to participate in an academic exchange jointly organized by National Taiwan University and Kyoto University. During the session on “Artificial Intelligence and Law,” he delivered a talk entitled “The Liability of AI-Assisted Human Decision-Making,” exploring the issue of liability allocation arising from AI involvement in human decision-making.

With the widespread adoption of AI in finance, healthcare, and the legal system, it offers significant advantages in efficiency and cost-effectiveness. However, like human decision-making, it remains subject to misjudgments, which may lead to substantial harm and give rise to liability disputes. Professor Huang emphasized that, in terms of liability allocation, users have the final authority to decide whether to rely on AI recommendations and thus exercise direct control over the occurrence of harm.

Users typically adjust their decisions dynamically based on information provided by AI to maximize overall benefits. Therefore, Huang stressed that a one-size-fits-all liability rule should not be applied, but instead should take into account factors such as the relative costs of errors and AI accuracy, and be flexibly designed across different contexts. For instance, in the AML context, given the number of false-positive transactions, human review may be desirable. By contrast, human review should be refrained from reviewing transactions released by AI systems. In applications with high AI accuracy, greater reliance on AI may be justified.

In the age of AI, how to establish a liability allocation mechanism that balances efficiency and fairness in human–AI collaboration will remain an important issue for the future. CIEL will continue to engage in research and promote academic dialogue and institutional development.

A joint study titled Organizing REITs in Asia by CIEL Deputy Director Yueh-Ping Yang, Professor Kelvin F. K. Low of the University of Hong Kong, Professor Jianbo Lou of Peking University, and Associate Professor Mutsuhiko Yukioka of the University of Tokyo is now available on SSRN. The chapter will appear in the forthcoming edited volume Asia-Pacific Trusts Law, Volume 4: Connections in Context, co-edited by Professor Ying Khai Liew of the University of Melbourne and Associate Professor Yang.

Adopting a comparative law perspective, the study examines Real Estate Investment Trust (REITs) regimes across five major Asian jurisdictions—Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. The analysis focuses on two key issues: first, the organizational structures of REITs in these jurisdictions, including whether they adopt trust-based structures and how different institutional designs influence market development; and second, the regulatory and legal challenges associated with different organizational arrangements.

The study finds that significant differences exist in the organizational forms of REITs across Asia. Japan, the most mature REIT market in the region, structures its J-REITs as investment corporations rather than trust-based vehicles. In contrast, Hong Kong and Singapore primarily operate REITs through unit trusts structures, although differences in tax design and market structure have led to distinct developmental paths. Meanwhile, Taiwan and China place trust structures at the core of their REIT frameworks. China has rapidly expanded its infrastructure REIT market through multi-layered structures, whereas Taiwan’s REIT market has remained relatively limited due to legal design and regulatory constraints.

Overall, the study suggests that there is no single optimal legal structure for REITs. Institutional arrangements are shaped by each jurisdiction’s tax regime, corporate and trust law frameworks, as well as its financial regulatory environment. Through cross-jurisdictional comparison, the research further highlights the diverse developmental pathways of REIT markets in Asia and sheds light on the processes of institutional transplantation and legal adaptation.

📖 Full article:https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6332318

On January 21, 2026, CIEL Deputy Director Professor Yueh-Ping Yang was invited to speak at the 17th Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Financial Crime Conference—Taiwan, hosted by the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS). In his featured lecture, titled “Transparency of Legal Persons and Legal Arrangements,” Professor Yang examined the central role of the beneficial ownership regime within the anti-money laundering framework, drawing on international standards and Taiwan’s current legal system.

Professor Yang first outlined the requirements under Recommendations 24 and 25 of the FATF Recommendations concerning beneficial ownership for legal persons and legal arrangements. He emphasized that the FATF calls on jurisdictions to ensure that competent authorities can obtain beneficial ownership information on legal persons and legal arrangements swiftly and effectively, and to adopt effective measures to prevent the misuse of nominee shareholders or nominee directors for money laundering or terrorist financing.

Turning to Taiwan’s legal framework, Professor Yang referenced Article 22-1 of the Company Act and Article 11 of the Money Laundering Control Act, noting that while the current system imposes reporting and record-keeping obligations for certain company information and for some trustees, Taiwan still relies heavily on financial institutions and DNFBPs to identify beneficial owners. A comprehensive system for the reporting and centralized access to beneficial ownership information has yet to be fully established. Significant transparency gaps also remain with respect to nominee shareholders/directors, legal persons other than companies, and legal arrangements other than trusts.

By comparing international AML standards with Taiwan’s existing legal framework and regulatory practices, the lecture identified key areas where further reforms are needed to enhance the transparency of legal persons and legal arrangements, and offered important policy and legislative insights for strengthening Taiwan’s anti-money laundering and counter-financial crime regime.

In January 2026, CIEL Deputy Director Professor Yueh-Ping Yang co-authored the book chapter “Control and Ownership of Digital Assets: Taiwan” with Professor Meng-Shiang Lin of Ming Chuan University.  It is included in Control and Ownership of Digital Assets, edited by Mirjam Eggen, Linda Jeng, and Sebastian Omlor.

Legal Characterization of Virtual Assets under Civil Law: The Trend toward Personal Property

• Legal characterization: Although Taiwan has not yet enacted a special private law statute governing virtual assets, judicial practice has gradually formed a consensus characterizing virtual assets as personal property under the Civil Code.
• Determination of possession: Courts tend to regard the actual knowledge of private keys or seed phrases as the core criterion for establishing actual control and powers of disposition. This approach is broadly consistent with the UNIDROIT Principles on Digital Assets and Private Law.

Custodial Relationships and Allocation of Rights: Application of the Deposit Contract

• Legal relationship: Where traders hold virtual assets through custodians, current regulations and court decisions generally characterize the relationship between customers and custodians as a deposit contract under the Civil Code.
• Ownership attribution: Under Taiwan’s Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) registration regime, enacted in 2024, ownership of the virtual assets remains with the customer, while the custodian is deemed the direct possessor. The customer retains the status of indirect possessor and holds a right to request the return of their virtual asset.

Limits of the Personal Property Framework and the Proposed Ledger-Based Approach

• Doctrinal debate: While Taiwanese courts tend to classify virtual assets as personal property, a majority of scholars conceptualize virtual assets as intangible property rights.
• Challenges of publicity: Defining “possession” by reference to the knowledge of private keys or seed phrases fails to generate the level of publicity and observability traditionally required for possession under property law.
• Legislative proposal: The chapter suggests that the transfer and publicity of rights in virtual assets would be better grounded in a ledger-based system, using distributed ledger records as the basis for rights attribution, thereby addressing the deficiencies in publicity and reliability associated with key-based control.

This research not only presents the current state of Taiwan’s private law framework for virtual assets, but also proposes forward-looking institutional designs that may inform future legislation and judicial practice. The information of the book is as follows: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/book/control-and-ownership-of-digital-assets-9783162001344/.

CIEL will continue to engage with the intersection of virtual assets, financial technology, and private law, fostering in-depth dialogue and international collaboration in emerging areas of technology law.

On December 20, 2025, CIEL Deputy Director Professor Yueh-Ping Yang was invited to attend the conference “Major Constitutional Challenges in the AI Era,” hosted by the ROC Constitutional Law Society. Professor Yang delivered a speech entitled “AI Discrimination and Explainable AI: Focusing on AI Credits,” offering an in-depth analysis of how AI-driven decisions affect financial fairness and how law and technology can work together to respond to these challenges.

Professor Yang first introduced the provisions on AI fairness set out in the Financial Supervisory Commission’s Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Applications in the Financial Industry. He emphasized that “fairness” does not mean uniform equality or the absence of differential treatment, but rather differential treatment with legitimate justification. The key issue lies in whether such differential treatment is grounded on reasonableness and whether it results in systematic adverse impacts on specific groups with reasonable grounds.

Professor Yang further noted that while AI entails risks of discrimination, a more comprehensive understanding is that AI “may be more fair than humans, yet also more discriminatory.” The fundamental risk of AI stems from its “black box” decision-making process, and Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) can play a critical role in addressing this challenge. Through techniques such as SHAP, LIME, and counterfactual explanations, financial institutions can analyze the key variables used in AI-driven decisions and the influence of individual variables on outcomes, thereby assessing whether protected characteristics are being used and whether such use can be justified.

In conclusion, Professor Yang proposed the “relative black box theory,” arguing that the integration of AI with XAI does not necessarily exacerbate discrimination, but may instead facilitate more objective solutions. Nevertheless, this approach requires supporting legal frameworks, including clearly defined protected groups in relevant legislation, permitting the use of protected characteristics for testing purposes, and empowering regulators to establish acceptable thresholds for differential treatment.

CIEL will continue to closely monitor the interaction between the evolution of AI technologies and the rule of law, promote financial fairness and justice in the digital age, and contribute to the development of a more resilient and transparent AI regulatory framework in Taiwan.

CIEL Deputy Director Professor Chao-Hung Chen has recently published his article, “Regulating Consumer Contracts with Government-Made Templates: An Examination of Taiwan’s Approach to Boilerplate Forms,” in the Asian Journal of Comparative Law. The study examines Taiwan’s practice of issuing government-issued standard contractual templates to regulate business conducts and reassesses the boundary between private autonomy and public regulatory intervention from comparative law and law-and-policy perspectives. The article explores how contractual templates function as a regulatory instrument guiding market participants toward stronger consumer protection, offering an innovative Taiwanese perspective to the global comparative law community.

🔹 A Top-Down Regulatory Approach: Templates as Administrative Guidance

Unlike jurisdictions where contractual templates emerge through industry associations, Taiwan adopts a top-down approach in which government agencies issue standard form contractual templates to harmonise industry practices and balance the rights and obligations between businesses and consumers. Although most templates lack formal binding legal force and operate primarily as administrative guidance, they demonstrate considerable “stickiness” in practice and serve as influential benchmarks for contract drafting.

🔹 Case Study in Payment Services: Effectiveness and Strategic Adaptation

Drawing on a comparative case study of electronic payment institutions and third-party payment service providers, the research finds that firms largely adhere to government-issued templates even when adoption is not legally mandatory. This suggests that templates function as quasi-regulatory instruments in practice. At the same time, businesses strategically adjust specific provisions within the template framework to preserve operational flexibility and align contractual terms with commercial interests.

🔹 From Administrative Guidance to Quasi-Regulatory Norms

The study further observes that, while Taiwan’s Consumer Protection Act expressly authorises regulators to issue mandatory and prohibitory clauses, the legal status and effects of contractual templates remain partly ambiguous. As government-issued templates become widely adopted and exert substantive regulatory influence, greater transparency and procedural legitimacy in their formulation will be essential to strengthen their normative authority in regulating unfair contract terms.

Overall, the article traces the evolution of nearly one hundred contractual templates issued in Taiwan over the past two decades and demonstrates how governments may employ contractual design as a regulatory “nudge” to promote consumer-friendly market practices in the digital economy.

CIEL will continue advancing interdisciplinary research at the intersection of technology law, financial regulation, and private law, enhancing the international visibility and impact of Taiwanese legal scholarship through global academic engagement.

📖 Full article: https://doi.org/10.1017/asjcl.2025.10009

On November 13, 2025, CIEL Deputy Director Professor Yueh-Ping Yang was invited to attend the “International Forum on Virtual Asset Crimes Investigation and Cross-Border Cooperation,” hosted by the Anti-Money Laundering Office, Executive Yuan. The forum brought together expert representatives from domestic and international government agencies to engage in in-depth discussions on topics including tracking illicit virtual asset flows, combating online fraud, and strengthening cross-border cooperation.

Deputy Director Yang served as a panelist in the session titled “Stablecoins and Chinese Web: Money Laundering and Clearing Services between Digital Asset and FIAT.” The session featured keynote presentations by Mathieu H. L. and Simon Roch from FIU France. From legal and regulatory perspectives, Deputy Director Yang highlighted the following key points:

• Traditional financial crime investigations have focused on monitoring money flows; however, in the era of digital finance, the boundary between money flows and data flows is increasingly blurred, calling for a rethinking of crime prevention strategies.
• In virtual asset–related crimes, the key points for investigation may be shifting from unregulated OTCs to unregulated decentralized finance (DeFi).
• Within DeFi ecosystems, SNS platforms, such as Telegram or Wechat, play a critical role in facilitating communication and coordination. Future criminal investigations should therefore extend beyond regulating financial intermediaries (e.g., VASPs) to also consider the role of digital platform service providers.

CIEL will continue to engage in international exchanges and work alongside government authorities and law enforcement agencies to advance the development of financial regulation and crime prevention frameworks for virtual assets.

On October 31, 2025, CIEL Deputy Director Professor Yueh-Ping Yang was invited to attend the ” Stablecoin Trends and Cybersecurity in Taiwan and Korea Seminar ” by Soochow University, School of Law and Digital Financial Law Forum (DFLF) of Korea Professor Yang served as the keynote speaker, presenting on “Taiwan’s Stablecoin Legislative Development and Regulatory Issues,” with an in-depth analysis of:

✔️ Regulatory development of Taiwan’s stablecoin regulations – reviewing the status of Taiwan’s stablecoin regulations.
✔️ Comparative stablecoin regulations – comparing how the stablecoin regulations in different countries converge and diverge.
✔️ Differences and similarities between stablecoins and e-money – highlighting stablecoins’ specialities in price depegging risk, ledger operational risk, and money laundering risk.
✔️ Stablecoin lending regulation – explaining market operations and comparative regulations.
✔️ Future stablecoin regulations – highlighting the need to focus on stablecoins’ secondary trading markets and virtual asset service providers.

The seminar facilitated meaningful dialogue and exchange between Taiwan and Korea on stablecoin and digital finance legal frameworks. CIEL will continue to monitor domestic and international regulatory developments, and through research, participation in international forums, and seminars, deepen its understanding of relevant issues while providing professional insights with a global perspective.

On October 16-18, 2025, CIEL Deputy Director Prof. Yueh-Ping Yang attended the annual meeting of the American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL) and its Younger Comparativist Committee (YCC), as YCC’s Co-Director, hosted in McGill University Faculty of Law, Canada. Prof. Yang further presented on “The Comparative Digital Asset Regulation and the Lesson for the United States.”

Prof. Yang began by quoting the statement of SEC’s Chair, Paul Atkins, that the U.S. is 10 year behind in digital asset regulation. He reviewed the rapid evolution of the digital asset market over the past decade and the regulatory issues related to ICOs, NFTs, stablecoins, the FTX collapse, Bitcoin ETFs, etc. Based on these reviews, he put forward a framework for classifying various digital asset regulatory issues and compared the different coverage in Japan, the EU, the UK, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

Based on the comparative analyses, Prof. Yang identified the development in various digital asset regulatory issues in the U.S. and analyzed the regulatory fragmentation by the SEC, CFTC, and other federal regulators. He proposed that the U.S. needs a comprehensive digital asset law to consolidate the needed regulations for offerors, market participants, and other business operators and clarify the respective role of each primary regulator.

Prof. Yang began to serve as ASCL YCC’s Co-Director in 2024 and will continue this position until 2026. CIEL will continue to support ASCL and YCC in that capacity, collaborating with comparativists in the U.S. and the world and encouraging studies by young comparativists.