China's P2P platforms post record sales despite regulators' finger-wagging

Chinese peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms sold a record RMB119.6 billion (US$18.8 billion) of financing products in October despite new government guidelines, Bloomberg reported, citing research firm Yingcan Group. “Risks are piling up in the P2P industry” in China as there haven’t been any specific legal rules since the general guidelines in July, said Zhu Ning, deputy dean of Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance at Shanghai Jiaotong University. The average yield on investments linked to online lending was 12.38% in October, topping the 4.54% of wealth-management products sold by Chinese banks, according to data from Yingcan and consulting firm CNBenefit. For more on P2P in China, see CER’s in-depth report.