China to prevent financial risks with tightened regulation

China’s top financial regulators, including the People's Bank Of China, China Banking Regulatory Commission and China Insurance Regulatory Commission, have imposed hefty fines over non-compliant financial institutions since the start of 2018, signalizing intensified efforts to prevent financial risks, deleverage and tighten supervision.

An overhaul of China’s financial industry has kicked off, noted an industry insider, pointing out that to ensure the bounden duty and purpose of the financial sector and defuse risks remain the key tone of financial supervision this year and in the long-term future.

Prevention and control of financial risks were prioritized by China in its National Financial Work Conference and Central Economic Work Conference in 2017 as well.

In 2018, the first year after the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, it is of greater importance to strengthen financial supervision, but the increasingly complicated and interconnected environment poses new challenges to the process.

Data showed that China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, gave 109 tickets to the third-party payment platforms in 2017, tripling the 2016 figure. The penalty in 2017 totaled 28 million yuan ($4.41 million). Since the beginning of this year, five fines have been issued around the Spring Festival in February.

An enhanced supervision aims to pull the third-party payment providers back to lawful operation. In early January, the central bank renewed the fifth batch of business license of non-bank payment institutions, while four of the 25 platforms failed to pass the review.