China’s top government authority has unveiled major changes to the licensing system for the opening of enterprise bank accounts by commercial lenders.
On 13 September the State Council passed a decision to cancel a total of 29 administrative licensing items, as well as delegate licensing of four items to other administrative bodies.
This included the cancellation the approval and issuance of enterprise bank accounts licenses by the State Council itself.
Following the cancellation of the licenses the Chinese central bank, being the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), is entrusted with “strengthening regulation” of enterprise bank accounts, with key measures including:
- “Firming up” the main responsibilities of commercial banks with regard to account management, and spurring commercial banks to engage in online inspection of enterprise registrations, relevant personnel and tax payments. When required commercial banks must provide prompt, comprehensive and accurate enterprise bank account information to PBOC.
- Expand the vigour of inspections of commercial banks, and where illegal conduct is uncovered in relation to enterprise bank accounts adopt punitive measures including prohibitions on the opening of new accounts and suspension of non-counter operations, in order to raise theist of legal breaches.
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