Chinese Central Bank Releases Fintech Development Plan for 2019 – 2021

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) released its latest policy outline for development of the Chinese fintech sector in August 2019.

PBOC’s “Fintech Development Plan (2019 – 2021)” (金融科技（FinTech）发展规划（2019-2021年）) outlines “guidance ideology, basic principles, development targets, key missions and guarantee mechanisms” for fintech work over the upcoming three years.

The Plan proposes that by 2021 China establish and improve the “four beams and eight pillars” for China’s fintech development, which includes:

• Further strengthening fintech application capability;
• Achieving in-depth integration and coordinated development of finance and technology;
• Markedly strengthening the level of satisfaction of the public with regard to digitised, internet, smart financial products and services;
• Driving China’s fintech development to be at the international forefront;
• Achieving advanced controllability of fintech applications, steady strengthening of financial services capability, markedly increasing financial risk control levels, continuing to raise financial regulatory efficiency, and continually improving fintech support.

The Plan also outlines key missions in six areas:

1. Strengthening fintech strategic deployments, strengthening top-level design from a long-term perspective, grasping fintech development trends, properly performing overall planning, optimising systemic mechanisms and the creation of personnel teams.
2. Strengthening the rational application of fintech, using focused breakthroughs to drive overall development, standardising the selection of key shared technology, capability establishment, application scenarios and security management. Comprehensively raising the fintech application level, and making fintech a “new driver” of high-quality financial growth.
3. Energising quality and efficiency increases in financial services, making rational use of fintech methods to enrich service channels, improve product supply, reduce service costs, optimise financial services and raise the quality and efficiency of financial services, enabling the fruits of fintech innovations to better benefit average citizens, and drive healthy, sustainable growth in the real economy.
4. Strengthening financial risk prevention capability, correctly handling the relationship between security and growth, using fintech to improve the ability to identify and dispose of cross-market, cross-operational and cross-regional financial risk; strengthen internet security risk control and financial information protection, effectively perform new technology application risk prevention, and firmly protect the bottom line against the onset of systemic financial risk.
5. Strengthening fintech regulation, establishing and improving a basic rules system for regulation; accelerating the drafting of basic regulatory rules, monitoring analysis and assessment work; exploring fintech innovation regulatory mechanisms and comprehensive financial statistics; strengthening the specialisation, unification and comprehensiveness of financial regulation.
6. Fortifying foundational supports for fintech, continuing to improve the fintech industry ecosystem, optimising the industry management system, and supporting the healthy and orderly growth of fintech in the areas of technological breakthroughs, legal and regulatory development, credit service, benchmarks and standards, and consumer protections.