Chinese Central Bank Flags “Hard Legal Bottom Line” for Fintech Product Innovation

The Chinese central bank’s tech head has provided more details on its plans for the fintech sector just following the release of its three-year fintech development policy in August.

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

Speaking at an industry event held on 25 September Li Wei (李伟), head of PBOC’s tech department, said that the Chinese central bank will adopt multiple measures to drive the healthy development of fintech in Chinese, and establish and improve China’s fintech regulatory system.

Li said that PBOC will strengthen regulation of innovative fintech products; set a firm legal “bottom line” for fintech product innovation, set soft regulatory boundaries, strengthen protection of personal financial information, and strictly prevent the disclosure, amendment or abuse of personal financial information.

The PBOC official also stressed the need to effectively balance the relationship between convenience and security when it came to financial services; strengthen regtech applications, and prevent risk in relation to technological applications.