From Source Governance to Collaborative Regulation: Financial Supervision Bureau Weaves Consumer Protection "Safety Net"

Currently, China’s financial consumer protection has officially entered the “Great Consumer Protection” era. As the coordinating department, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) continues to promote in-depth and practical financial consumer protection work.

For example, on January 15 this year, the CBIRC held the 2026 regulatory work conference, emphasizing the solid implementation of responsibilities for coordinating financial consumer protection. In February, the second joint meeting on financial consumer and investor protection regulation was held in Beijing, where efforts to gather all parties to work together and address difficult issues were discussed.

Over the past year, the CBIRC, together with relevant departments, has established a “Great Consumer Protection” framework, continuously deepening cross-market and cross-industry collaboration on consumer protection issues, and striving to build a more solid and effective “safety net” for the rights and interests of financial consumers.

Image source: Visual China

Continuously Improving the Financial Consumer Protection System

By 2025, the CBIRC will strengthen institutional development around product suitability, agency sales, consumer protection regulation evaluation, and credit system construction, standardizing the entire process of financial institutions’ consumer rights protection behaviors.

It will reinforce suitability management requirements, moving the protection of financial consumers’ rights to the front end. This includes guiding financial institutions to implement responsibilities related to product classification, consumer risk assessment, disclosure obligations, and suitability matching, ensuring sellers fulfill their duties and effectively prevent product mismatches and sales misguidance from the source.

The regulation of commercial bank agency sales will be strengthened, directly addressing issues such as information opacity, irregular charges, and inadequate prompts in agency sales. Full-process, transparent supervision of agency sales by commercial banks will be implemented to effectively regulate behaviors and foster a safe and trustworthy financial consumption environment.

The consumer rights protection regulation evaluation mechanism will be optimized, expanding coverage and reshaping evaluation indicators. Emphasis will be placed on “suitability management,” “marketing behavior management,” “dispute resolution,” and “personal information protection,” guiding financial institutions to enhance governance in key protection areas and deeply integrate consumer protection into corporate governance, product design, marketing, and customer service throughout all processes.

The construction of a credit system in the financial sector will be strengthened, with increased penalties for dishonesty by financial institutions and practitioners. Market entities will be guided to enhance integrity awareness, maintaining good order in the financial market and promoting high-quality development.

Enhancing Collaborative Governance

The CBIRC, together with relevant departments, has built a “Great Consumer Protection” framework, deepening cross-market and cross-industry collaboration to create a more solid “safety net” for financial consumer rights.

On one hand, a new “one-body linkage” mechanism has been established to break down barriers and unify efforts. The CBIRC has led the creation of a financial consumer rights protection coordination mechanism, enabling timely information sharing, regular consultations, and joint policy issuance, achieving “top-level resonance” in policy design and coordination, laying a solid foundation for solving difficult issues.

At the same time, the CBIRC has guided local agencies to establish multi-level coordination mechanisms and actively integrate into local social governance systems, working with local authorities on publicity, anti-fraud, and dispute resolution.

On the other hand, a new practice of “multi-party co-governance” has been promoted to strengthen the rights protection network. To effectively address cross-department, cross-field, and cross-market issues, the CBIRC focuses on prominent problems in cross-industry financial consumer protection and issues strongly reflected by the public. It actively promotes the upgrade and expansion of the “circle of collaboration,” working with relevant departments on joint diagnosis and targeted solutions.

For instance, the CBIRC and related agencies jointly combat illegal intermediary activities in finance, coordinate with the Cyberspace Administration of China and other departments to strengthen monitoring and governance of malicious online financial information, and collaborate with the police to crack down on “black and gray” industry clusters, creating effective deterrence. Regarding issues of consumer rights violations in loan facilitation, the CBIRC, together with the People’s Bank of China and the Market Supervision Administration, has held interviews with six platform companies, issued notices of problems, and required rectifications.

In response to societal concerns about debt collection, industry associations have been guided to develop and issue work guidelines to regulate the behavior of financial institutions and external collection agencies in personal loan recovery.

Comprehensive Financial Education Enhancement

By 2025, the CBIRC will diligently fulfill its responsibilities for coordinating financial consumer rights protection, working with the People’s Bank of China and the China Securities Regulatory Commission to focus on high-quality financial development and safeguarding the interests of the people. It will carry out in-depth financial education, popularize financial knowledge among the public, promote policies to boost consumption through finance, improve financial initiatives benefiting the people, and create a safe and reliable consumption and investment environment to better meet the people’s needs for a better life.

According to reports, by building a multi-dimensional financial education dissemination network, the financial system will innovate formats and integrate resources. By 2025, about 1.53 million educational and promotional activities will be conducted, approximately 2.73 million original financial education works produced, reaching around 17 billion people.

In the multi-layered promotion of the “Risk Warning Delivery” campaign, nationwide efforts have organized about 497,000 original risk warnings, ensuring that financial consumer protection reminders are always close to the public. The CBIRC has issued risk alerts on false advertising and inducements related to online loans, and jointly with the Cyberspace Administration, the Ministry of Public Security, the People’s Bank, and the CSRC, issued warnings about illegal “agency rights protection” short videos and live streams, revealing related hazards to the public and helping raise risk awareness.

In strengthening education for the entire financial industry and personnel, the CBIRC has enhanced training and advocacy, organizing training sessions for financial institutions and partners on suitability management, integrity culture, and other topics, guiding the industry to uphold the principle of “seller’s due diligence.” It promotes the selection of exemplary models through competitions and the establishment of industry benchmarks, fostering a culture of excellence. It also promotes Chinese financial culture, guiding industry associations to strengthen integrity education, summarize and publicize best practices and cases of honest service, and advocate for honesty, prudence, and stability to create a clean and healthy financial ecosystem.

Notably, to comprehensively understand consumers’ financial literacy levels and accurately identify weaknesses in financial education, the CBIRC has organized nationwide consumer financial literacy surveys, with over 250,000 valid samples covering all 31 provinces, 258 prefectures, 3,036 counties (cities, districts, banners), and 14,705 towns (streets). This provides precise insights into consumer financial literacy and educational needs, supporting targeted and effective financial publicity and education.

(Author: Yang Xi; Editor: Zhou Yanyan, Xiao Jia)