The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) says it has amassed an immense trove of financial data in a bid to cement its control of Chinese financial institutions.
Speaking at the inaugural conference of the Alliance for Financial Stability with Information Technology (AFS-IT) in Hong Kong, Dr Fan Wenzhong, director general of CBIRC’s international division, said that the commission is focusing upon the use of information technology to enhance regulatory control.
“By the end of 2017 the cumulative collection of banking financial institutions’ accounting records, transaction data, and various types of management data amounted to nearly 3 trillion records, covering 2,755 legal entities in 711 first-tier branches,” said Fan according to a report from the South China Morning Post.
According to Fan financial data is increasingly a “core economic resource of society, necessitating improvements to the transparency and commercial openness of digital trading platforms, and the prevention of “opaque [and] dark areas throughout the financial system.”
The launch of AFS-IT in Hong Kong on Wednesday brought together central bankers and financial regulators from around the Asia-Pacific for the first time, as part of efforts to maintain financial stability amidst the breakneck development of new forms of digital technology.
Claire Lo, co-chair of AFS-IT and former deputy secretary for financial services and the treasury in Hong Kong, said that the aim of the group was to provide an independent, non-official global platform that can develop innovative solutions to the regulatory challenges created by ongoing fintech developments.
“Developments in digital technology move extremely fast and we simply must keep up,” said Lo.
