The peak body for the Chinese banking sector has called for greater use of digital channels and big data to drive financial inclusion. Liu Feng (??), chief secretary of the China Banking Association (CBA) called for “investing great vigour in raising the ability to provide digital financial inclusion services,” while also recommending the “establishment of a cross-industry, cross-sector, cross-regional national data services platform.” Liu made the remarks on 10 September at the 2021 “Small Enterprise, Big Dreams” summit (??? ???). “At present, the development of financial inclusion in China overall displays an excellent condition of increasing volume, expanding area, contracting prices and rising quality,” said Liu. “However, the depth and breadth of financial inclusion awaits further increase. Banking institutions must continually improve their own data governance mechanisms, integrate internal and external information and data sources, deeply uncover data value, reduce lending risk that arises due to information asymmetries, and increase the level of satisfaction of small and medium-sized enterprises vis-a-vis financial services.” In addition to the creation of a national data services platform, Liu also called for “improving public data gathering by the government; sharing and applying systems arrangements, increasing the level, efficiency and granularity of public data, achieving data transparency and highly efficient allocation of financial resources, helping banking institutions to achieve accurate, real-time understanding of regional, industry and SME development conditions; and increasing the level of financial inclusion services.”
