Chinese Central Bank Convenes First Meeting of Fintech Committee for 2019, Flags Further Growth Support

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has convened the first meeting of its Fintech Committee (金融科技委员会) for 2019, and announced the release of a new set of development plans and targets in future.

The meeting stated that fintech had seen flourishing growth amidst a new round of tech revolutions and industry shift, providing immense impetus for transition and upgrade of the financial sector.

In future the Chinese central bank will “strengthen standardised guidance of fintech innovation, drive the rational application of the new generation of information technologies in the financial sphere, including artificial intelligence, cloud computing and big data; continuously raise the application and administration level for fintech, and push for fintech to become a major force for servicing the real economy, preventing financial risk and deepening financial supply side structural reforms.”

The meeting of PBOC’s Fintech Committee also stressed that it would continue to uphold the principles of security, inclusion and openness in 2019.

Measures on PBOC’s fintech agenda for this year include:

1. Researching and unveiling fintech development plans, the confirmation of fintech growth targets, focal directions and main missions; strengthening overall preparations and industry guidance.
2. Gradual establishment of a fintech regulatory rules system, improvements to innovation regulation mechanisms, and the operation of an excellent policy environment which is of benefit to fintech development.
3. Deepening foundational fintech research by making use of full systems and social energy.
4. Full use of fintech methods to optimise loan procedures and customer assessment models, reduce enterprise financing costs, and ease the problem of finance being difficult and expensive for private enterprise and small and micro-entrprise. Strengthening of the ability of finance to service the real economy.
5. Continue to strengthen regtech applications, raise risk detection and technical prevention capability, strengthen the professionalism, unity and comprehensiveness of financial regulation, and firmly defend the baseline against the onset of systemic financial risk.