The center will serve as a platform from which officials and experts from the two sides of the strait can bolster two-way exchanges through activities like keynote speeches, large-scale financial seminars, talent training programs and financial product marketing projects.

Fubon Group Chairman Daniel Tsai is expected to speak at the opening ceremony on strategic innovation and business models in the financial sector.

Taiwan announced Monday that it had inked a financial supervisory cooperation memorandum of understanding (MOU) with China to broaden access to each other's financial industries. The MOU will take effect 60 days after the signing.

The day after the announcement was made, financial shares on the Taiwan Stock Exchange rallied strongly by 2.1 percent on news of the MOU.

Meanwhile, Bank of China and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China are at the head of the line to open branches in Taiwan, while many Taiwanese banks, such as state-run Bank of Taiwan and Land Bank of Taiwan, are hoping to establish branches in China.

Currently, eight Taiwan banks maintain only representative offices in China and are required to wait three years before they can upgrade their offices to branches. The MOU is expected to remove the waiting period and allow for immediate opening of branches in China.

The two sides will discuss these and other related issues in the upcoming preparatory talks on a planned cross-strait economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) that will be high on the agenda in their next round of negotiations in December in Taichung City, central Taiwan.

(By C. K. Huang and Flor Wang)