The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission hopes to curb systemic financial risk by using heavy penalties to deter malfeasance.
CBIRC hailed strong progress in its regulatory efforts across the first quarter of 2017, during which is issued a total of 646 penalties to banking and insurance institutions worth around 1.1 billion yuan (approx. USD$184 million).
China’s banking and insurance regulator also issued 798 penalties to individuals that were worth a total of 28.6 million yuan.
“All forms of violations have been seriously inhibited to forestall systemic financial risks,” said CBIRC in an official statement issued on Friday.
“The trend of highly frequent occurrence of violations has been further deterred.”
CBIRC said that it had dealt with major risks in a timely manner and issued heavy penalties for malfeasance, citing in particular its takeover of Anbang Insurance.
According to CBIRC the publicity surrounding these cases served as a warning for the sector as a whole, as well as an effective, long-term deterrence against violation of laws.
CBIRC says that this tougher supervision and punishment has served to strengthen risk and compliance awareness in both the banking and insurance sectors.
