China's central bank advocates safe, sound fintech applications

BEIJING - China's central bank hopes to inspire FinTech innovations while keeping a close eye on the corresponding risks, a deputy governor said Thursday at a seminar on FinTech and credit-building.

Fan Yifei, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China (PBOC), described innovation and security as "the dual wheels" of pushing ahead FinTech applications when addressing the seminar in Wuzhen of eastern China's Zhejiang province, according to the latest PBOC statement.

New technologies, featuring artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing and big data, are deeply transforming the financial sector and gradually become a major driver of credit building, said Fan.

Many countries including China and international organizations have conformed to the trend of the times, seized opportunities to map out relevant development plans and oversight rules and achieved positive results, he said.

The deputy governor listed several aspects where technologies can upgrade financial systems, such as breaking the bottlenecks of financial development, achieving easier access to financial services and enhancing the capabilities of financial institutions to better benefit their customers.

In addition, FinTech can also help improve information sharing in line with laws, facilitate credit building and better satisfy the credit service needs of the market, Fan added.

He stressed that FinTech brought both challenges and risks, as well as efficiency and opportunity. Therefore, overseeing FinTech applications should be a priority so that technological advancement is not made at the expense of financial security.

"A key task is to enhance financial supervision capabilities, which demands stricter oversight of technological applications, higher professionalism and unified and more penetrating supervision," he said.

As FinTech has become a global topic, Fan said the PBOC is willing to collaborate with the central banks of various countries and the financial industry to share in the opportunities, forge ahead and prompt the better use of FinTech for the people.