The National Internet Finance Association of China unveiled on Wednesday four national standards regulating internet financial sector, ranging from personal consumption credit to open source financial software development, the latest effort by the country to improve industry supervision and standardization.

Regarding information disclosure of personal consumption credit, the standard stipulates relevant requirements and content of information disclosure behavior of domestic players engaged in the segment. Specific disclosure information includes information of practitioners and key business information such as annualized interest rates of loans. 

"The release of the standard will provide guidance for relevant practitioners to standardize information disclosure behavior and further improve the information transparency," the association said.

The standards for open source software testing is aimed at effectively regulating the evaluation of financial institutions before introducing their open source software, helping them choose technical routes to improve quality.

Intelligent risk prevention and control technology in the internet finance sector is also equipped with relevant standard which specifies technical framework, functional requirements, security and operational requirements that the tech applications must meet in internet financial scenarios.

As online financial activities increase over the recent years, the requirement on personal identification technology is accordingly enhanced. 

The fourth standard concerning personal identification technology illustrates technical framework, technical requirements for credentials, tech requirements for identification and security for internet finance providers, in an aim to achieve a balance between personal information protection, information security, data security and transaction convenience, the association said.

With the continuous innovation and popularization of internet technology over recent years, internet finance has developed rapidly in China and has become an important force to promote economic growth, and enhance financial competitiveness and efficiency.

As of June 2022, the scale of domestic internet financial market has reached 27.5 trillion yuan ($3.78 trillion), an increase of 18.6 percent on a yearly basis, covering internet-based payment and settlement, online lending, wealth management, insurance, securities, block-chain and other fields.

The rapid development of fintech has also brought a series of challenges such as credit risk, fraud risk and information security risk, threatening the stable operation of internet financial platforms and institutions, and the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. To tackle the problems, the regulators have introduced a raft of measures to curb the risks.

Background

On the morning of March 25, 2016, the Internet Finance Association of China was established in Shanghai.

According to the meeting materials, there are 142 candidates for the first board of directors of the Internet Finance Association of China, and more than 400 members of the first batch of units.