Customer education needed to fight financial crime

Low financial capability has left some Chinese customers vulnerable to financial crime, while leaving others less able to access financial services, according to experts, who said the key to boosting financial inclusion lies in customer education.

Since the beginning of the year, many peer-to-peer lending platforms have collapsed and about 50 of these companies' bosses have fled, undermining the safety of many clients' investments, according to data from information provider WDZJ.com.

Zeng Gang, director of banking research at the Institute of Finance and Banking of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in cases where P2P platforms ran illegal businesses, clients trusted the platforms because of a lack of financial knowledge. He also blamed such irrational behavior on an excessive desire to earn money and ignorance of the risks involved.

"The problem (of irrational investment) takes place in many other fields in the financial sector," Zeng said.

"Customers' low financial capability as a result of a lack of related education has become one of the key pressures on China's financial inclusion drive," said Mo Xiugen, research head at the Chinese Academy of Financial Inclusion at Renmin University of China.

Financial capability refers to consumers' literacy, attitude, behaviors and skills regarding financial services, according to Mo. He said low financial capability could lead to excessive or irrational borrowing, citing some customers using P2P platforms' services without any understanding of how they operate.

Low financial capability could also dampen customers' willingness to use proper financial services, especially in less-developed areas, Mo added, based on a recent survey covering 2,480 households in Lanzhou, Northwest China's Gansu province.

With financial products becoming more complex and personalized amid the rapid development of digital finance, customers' ability to obtain and understand financial products seems to be weakening, said Yu Wenjian, director of the consumer financial protection bureau of the People's Bank of China, at the 2018 International Forum for China Financial Inclusion.

To improve customers' financial literacy and promote financial inclusion in China, regulators, scholars and financial institutions have stepped up customer education efforts, both individually and collaboratively.

For instance, the PBOC has run campaigns disseminating financial knowledge every September since 2013, and has supported pilot trials incorporating financial education into primary school courses.

On Sep 25, Ant Financial Services Group, an affiliate of tech giant Alibaba, launched a plan to deliver financial security education in 100 villages, 100 factories, 100 schools and 100 communities across China in the next two years, to shield people from financial crimes.

The Chinese Academy of Financial Inclusion plans to provide clients of several leading financial institutions with online financial education, as part of the institutions' collaborative efforts to promote customer protection under the newly launched Customer Protection and Capability-building Program.

Zeng from the CASS called for more financial institutions to engage in customer education. "There is much room" for financial institutions to make online education innovation, he said, giving the examples of personalized teaching content and embedding education in various financial services.