Banking regulator publishes new draft rules for P2P lending platforms

The China Banking Regulatory Commission has published draft rules regulating the country’s peer-to-peer lending sector that would ban platforms from providing guarantees to clients or serving as more than simple intermediaries between borrowers and investors, The Wall Street Journal reported. Under the proposed rules such firms would be forbidden from selling other financial products – such as insurance, trust products, funds or wealth management products – and would have to publish information on lending turnover, overdue loans and bad loan ratios on their websites. But the rules lack explicit caps on both platforms’ total credit extended and individual borrowing, despite calling for both.