China insurance regulator issues warnings as chief probed

China’s insurance regulator stepped up its warnings about risks in the industry, days after the country’s anticorruption agency announced a probe of the regulator’s chief, Xiang Junbo. Risks to solvency and liquidity, poor corporate governance and external pressures from changes in currencies, stocks and other assets are some of the issues facing domestic insurers, said Chen Wenhui, a vice chairman at the China Insurance Regulatory Commission. The comments come after the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said Sunday that the insurance regulator’s chairman was suspected of “serious violations” of party discipline, a phrase typically used to denote graft, according to The Wall Street Journal. The probe casts fresh uncertainty over the regulator. Domestic insurers in recent years have been snapping up shares of listed firms with funds raised by selling highly lucrative investment products. Authorities are worried that the products have gotten too gimmicky, exposing buyers to risky assets.