The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has led the issuance of a new directive on open source technology in the financial sector, amidst a broader push to step up regulatory and standardisation measures.
The “Opinions Concerning the Standardisation of Financial Sector Open Sources Technology Application and Development” (关于规范金融业开源技术应用与发展的意见) was recently issued by a group of five central government agencies, including PBOC, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), and the banking and securities regulators.
Key provisions of the Opinions include:
- Requiring that financial institutions abide by the principles of security and controllability, compliant usage, problem guidance, and open innovations.
- Encouraging financial institutions to include open source technology applications in their own digitisation development plans.
- Strengthening organisation, regulation and overall coordination of open source technology applications.
- Establishing healthy regulatory systems for open source technology applications.
- Formulating rational open source technology application strategies.
- Encouraging financial institutions to raise their own assessment capability and compliance inspection capability with regard to open source technology.
- Encouraging financial institutions to actively participate in the development of an open source ecosystem.
- Strengthening cooperation and exchange with industry and academic associations.
- Improving guidance policies for the application of open source technology by financial institutions.
- Exploring the establishment of an open source technology public services platform.
- Strengthening open source technology and application standardisation.
“In recent years, open source technology has been broadly applied in the financial sector, and played an active role in driving technological innovation and digital transformation amongst financial institutions,” said PBOC’s official news outlet.
“There are still many challenges in terms of security and control however, and the issuance of the Opinions will help to raise the application level and independent controllability, and expedite the healthy and sustainable development of open source technology.”
