SOURCE / COMPANIES
Conforming to normal legal procedures will yield good results: PBC governor on Ant Group
Published: Jan 26, 2021 06:31 PM

A person walks towards a building of Alibaba Ant Group in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province in April 2018. Souce:IC



"Conforming to normal legal procedures will yield good results", China's central bank governor said on Tuesday in a suggestion about how Ant Group is supposed to refashion its business after two regulatory interviews into the Alibaba fintech offshoot. 

Chinese users surveyed by the central bank report high levels of satisfaction with Ant's products, but there are still some problems with the company concerning customer privacy, Yi Gang, governor of the People's Bank of China (PBC), the country's central bank, said in remarks at a session of the World Economic Forum's virtual Davos Agenda on Tuesday. 

The central bank has long supported fintech development and encouraged financial innovation, according to Yi, but it's equally important to prevent the abuse of one's monopolistic status.

"As long as we hold to law-based frameworks and procedures and have broad consultations with society, [there will be] a return to normal after the problems are resolved," he stated. 

Earlier this month, PBC deputy governor Chen Yulu disclosed that Ant had established a rectification working team and was formulating a timeframe for overhauling its platform services.

The Chinese fintech giant was hit by a regulatory blitz in early November, right before its planned dual IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong. 

Ant was summoned for a regulatory talk in late December, the second in less than two months. 

The country's financial regulators including the central bank identified major problems confronting Ant's operations, which include its poor governance mechanisms, weak legal awareness, defiance of regulatory and compliance requirements, and illegal regulatory arbitrage, read a statement released one day after the second regulatory interview.

Global Times