China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission sets Fourth Plenum implementation priorities with focus on risk containment and tougher supervision

The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission held an expanded Party committee meeting chaired by Li Yunze to study the Communist Party of China’s 20th Central Committee Fourth Plenum and to set out how the regulatory system will implement its decisions, placing risk prevention and strong, strict supervision at the centre of its work. The meeting highlighted the Plenum’s adoption of the Central Committee’s recommendations for formulating the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan and treated the Plenum outcomes and the General Secretary’s remarks as the guiding basis for financial regulatory work. Priorities included improving mechanisms to prevent and resolve risks in key areas to maintain the bottom line of avoiding systemic financial risk, strengthening political accountability for strong regulation and enhancing the “five major supervisory” functions to improve the forward-looking, precision, effectiveness, coordination and synergy of supervision. It also called for aligning regulatory work with the economic and social development goals for the Fifteenth Five-Year period by coordinating the “five major articles” of finance and for deepening full and strict Party governance, discipline and anti-corruption. Next steps focus on system-wide learning, communication and implementation of the Plenum’s decisions, with units required to translate study into tangible supervisory outcomes. The authority also directed departments to work against the annual target list with an accelerated timetable to ensure completion of remaining tasks for the current year and the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan, while preparing next year’s work and the Fifteenth Five-Year period agenda.