In Depth: How China’s Personal Credit Reporting Rules Upended an Industry

Under the new rules, personal information that the big data dealers collect has to go through two licensed personal credit reporting companies before being channeled to lenders.

China’s fintech platforms and big data providers are racing to feed troves of consumer data into the country’s two licensed personal credit reporting companies to meet new rules designed to better protect personal information from abuse.

The People’s Bank of China’s (PBOC) credit reporting system, set up in 2006, primarily pools data from banks and other traditional lenders on corporates and individuals. Outside this system, any personal information legally collected for the purpose of assessing creditworthiness in financial activities must now go through these two companies, which will ensure compliance with rules about how the data is collected, compiled, stored, processed and used, according to central bank rules that went into effect on Jan. 1, 2022.