The Chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission has visited Taiwan on Monday to discuss cross-strait collaboration regarding banking operations with its counterpart, Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission.

Even though no concrete conclusion has been made yet during the meeting, both parties have initially reached a consensus on loosening the restrictions on Taiwanese banks in the mainland, while allowing four China-invested banks to establish representative offices in Taiwan.

This is the first meeting between high-level banking watchdog agencies across the Taiwan Strait.

Chairman of the Financial Supervisory Commission Chen Yu-chang and Chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission Liu Mingkang discussed over three hours and reached an initial agreement, which would allow four Mainland Chinese banks to set up their branch offices in Taiwan.

In terms of Taiwanese banks' attempt to open offices in China, the current six banks, which have branch offices in China, are still unable to handle Chinese yuan operations in China given the restrictions.

During the meeting, Mainland China agrees to loosen the restrictions of Taiwanese banks setting up branch offices in China.

Since the meeting is preliminary, many details were left undiscussed.

It is estimated that a second meeting in Beijing in the second half of this year would develop more concrete details.