The latest compliance news: regulatory developments, punishments, guidance, permissions and new product and service offerings.

China
China's banking system had a total of RMB23.4 trillion ($3.34 trillion) of outstanding non-guaranteed wealth management products at the end of 2019, up by 6.15 per cent from one year earlier, according to mainland China’s Xinhua news service.

Some RMB22.33 trillion, or 95.43 per cent of the total, were publicly offered WMPs, while the remaining were privately offered products, the news service quoted a report jointly issued by the China Banking Wealth Management Registration and Depository Center and China Banking Association.

Policymakers in China have sought to control risks in the WMP sector, concerned about the amount of leverage in the overall financial system and the ability of these products to make good on the returns on offer. 

Regulators have forced banks to stop providing investors with implicit guarantees against investment losses. They have demanded stronger liquidity management stress tests to control risk. Banks cannot use WMPs to invest in any bank WMPs or provide a “channel service” for other institutions to bypass regulations.