The trend of stringent financial regulation is deepening along the business chain, comprehensively covering various market participants in the credit sector.
On January 6, the Jiangxi Provincial Local Financial Regulatory Administration issued the "Implementation Rules for the Supervision and Administration of Micro-Lending Companies in Jiangxi Province."
These rules not only define the business scope of micro-lending companies: they should be locally based and, in principle, are not allowed to operate across provinces; those with a regulatory rating of AA or above can operate across cities within the province; but also cut off practices such as lending out licenses and disguised financing: while approved to operate businesses like micro-lending and commercial acceptance bill discounting, they are prohibited from taking public deposits, lending out licenses, or issuing wealth management trust products.
Shortly before, in December 2025, the Shanghai Municipal Local Financial Regulatory Administration, to implement the National Financial Regulatory Administration's "Interim Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Micro-Lending Companies" (Jin Gui [2024] No. 26), formulated three supporting systems: the "Shanghai Micro-Lending Company Consumer Rights Protection Work Guidelines," the "Shanghai Micro-Lending Company Internet Platform and Product Information Filing Work Guidelines," and the "Shanghai Micro-Lending Company Financial Product Investment Work Guidelines," further standardizing the development of the micro-lending industry.
According to statistics, since 2025, local financial regulatory authorities in Hebei Province, Anhui Province, Tianjin, Shanxi Province, Jiangxi Province, Shanghai, and other regions have successively released implementation rule documents or draft opinions concerning the supervision and administration of micro-lending companies. This marks a significant intensification of financial oversight, extending comprehensively across all participants in the credit domain.
"The intensified regulation of loan facilitation services, micro-lenders, and licensed consumer finance since 2025 is essentially a systematic 'course correction'," said Chuanxingqiu Chairman You Xi, noting that supervision is no longer solely focused on licenses but now penetrates the entire process, including comprehensive interest rates, fee structures, funding sources, risk control responsibilities, payment channels, and customer acquisition practices.
Comprehensive interest rate constraints represent a critical red line for various platforms.
The "Notice on Strengthening the Management of Commercial Banks' Internet Loan Facilitation Business and Enhancing Financial Service Quality and Efficiency" (referred to as the "New Loan Facilitation Rules"), which took effect in October 2025, set a 24% cap: it specifies that the comprehensive financing cost for a single loan must comply with relevant provisions, such as the "Supreme People's Court's Several Opinions on Further Strengthening Financial Adjudication," which sets the annualized comprehensive financing cost rate at 24%.
Subsequently, in November, some local financial regulators imposed interest rate controls on licensed consumer finance companies. Based on regulatory window guidance, some companies were instructed to halt new products with annualized rates exceeding 20% and to adjust existing products exceeding this threshold by March 2026.
A month later, the micro-lending industry also received interest rate guidance.
Near the end of 2025, a regulatory document titled "Guidelines for the Management of Comprehensive Financing Costs of Micro-Lending Companies" sparked intense industry discussion. These guidelines require that the comprehensive financing cost for newly issued loans by micro-lending companies must not exceed an annualized rate of 24%; furthermore, micro-lenders must gradually reduce the comprehensive financing cost for new loans to within four times the one-year Loan Prime Rate (LPR) by the end of 2027 (based on the January 20, 2026, one-year LPR of 3.0%, this would be approximately 12%).
Regarding risk control responsibilities, regulators are mandating the establishment of list-based systems to block risk transmission at the source.
Specifically, financial institutions must implement list-based management for platform operators and credit enhancement service providers, disclosing these lists through official websites and mobile applications, updating them promptly, and are prohibited from cooperating with entities outside the list for internet loan facilitation business. Simultaneously, they must strengthen the准入 management of these operators and providers, prudently setting准入 standards, effectively conducting due diligence, and enforcing strict approval processes.
Suxi Zhiyan Senior Researcher Su Xiaoru stated that paths where credit guarantee institutions, lacking sufficient strength themselves, attempt to illegally pass various costs onto borrowers will no longer be feasible.
Notably, window guidance from some local regulators in November 2025 also involved reducing the upper limit for the proportion of guarantee and credit enhancement businesses from 50% to 25%. This implies a significant compression of profit margins for business models reliant on guarantee enhancements.
On the funding side, compliance adjustments targeting the capital supply end of credit businesses are underway, driven by regulatory efforts.
The "Administrative Measures for Asset Management Trusts (Draft for Comment)" issued by the National Financial Regulatory Administration in October 2025 explicitly prohibit trust companies from engaging in channel businesses and fund pool operations. This means trust institutions' capital operations in the consumer finance sector are also under strict scrutiny.
Subsequently, in November, some licensed consumer finance companies received notifications to "suspend all consumer finance institutions from issuing ABS and financial bonds; products already approved but not yet issued will be paused."
Additionally, senior industry insiders revealed that recently, many commercial factoring companies in various regions have received self-inspection notices from regulators, requiring them to check for违规 businesses. The notices explicitly prohibit factoring companies from engaging in 22 types of businesses or activities, including disguised consumer loan operations.
At the payment channel level, high-interest loans face potential disruption.
Wang Pengbo, Chief Analyst at Botong Consulting, pointed out that payment is the core carrier for realizing online loan transactions; without the fund transfer in the payment环节, the transaction闭环 between lenders and borrowers cannot be completed. Furthermore, the opening of payment accounts and the management of fund flows are directly related to the control of fund pools.一旦 the payment环节 is失控, it can easily lead to risks such as misappropriation of fund pools, becoming a primary path for risk transmission from the payment industry to the financial industry.
According to multiple media reports, by the end of December 2025, regulators had issued specific regulatory measures targeting some payment companies: they are prohibited from opening payment accounts for financial institutions, especially micro-lenders, and are required to investigate institutions involved in business scenarios with an internal annualized rate of return (IRR) exceeding 24%.
The regulatory signal quickly spread to other payment institutions. Currently, some payment companies have suspended deduction services for types like mall purchases and monthly guarantee plans.
Wang Pengbo indicated that local regulatory window guidance要求清理存量业务 of micro-lenders and loan facilitators, coupled with违规 behaviors by some online lenders—such as unlicensed lending, "high-rate" (Gaopao)业务, and illegal debt collection—and the use of隐蔽 models like商品分期 and multi-layer引流 to push up rates, have attracted market attention. Payment, being a key环节 of online lending, naturally becomes a regulatory focus. To avoid penalties and阻断风险传导, payment institutions are proactively initiating investigations into usurious online lending businesses.
Furthermore, the People's Bank of China's annual work conference held on January 5-6, 2026, mentioned "strictly implementing穿透式监管 and functional supervision of payment businesses for payment institutions."
Industry practitioners note that financial regulation is always in a state of dynamic adjustment and continuous monitoring. Regulators maintain sharp vigilance over various grey-area models in the credit sector, where relevant public sentiment or恶性 events could trigger regulatory intervention.
You Xi believes the core regulatory objectives are to reduce high leverage, high interest rates, and "off-balance-sheet risks," pushing consumer finance away from a "traffic-driven, scale-expansion" model towards a long-term framework of "compliant operation, risk self-bearing, and returning to普惠." This is not a short-term tightening but a reshaping of the regulatory paradigm.
From the perspective of some practitioners, while the pace of regulatory document issuance has exceeded expectations, the consensus within the industry is that "regulation will become increasingly stricter in 2026."
You Xi posits that under the normalization of stringent regulation, consumer finance in 2026 will face pressure from three fronts simultaneously: first, the funding side, where costs for joint loans and channel funds rise, and capital constraints become harder; second, the asset side, where targeting下沉 customer groups is restricted, pricing space is compressed, and non-performing loans are more likely to surface; third, the business model side, where the "light-asset arbitrage" space for loan facilitation基本上 disappears.
Against the backdrop of continuously deepening stringent regulation, the consumer credit industry is undergoing structural transformation and facing multiple challenges. Some practitioners point out that as business cycles shorten and industry competition intensifies, small and medium-sized platforms may need to adjust their business models, with some potentially forced to exit the market. In contrast, leading institutions, leveraging advantages like customer acquisition through information flows, can continue focusing on serving high-quality customer groups within the 24% interest rate bracket, thereby consolidating their market competitiveness.
A senior industry insider stated that the fundamental goal of regulatory rule-making is to guide the industry towards lowering comprehensive financing costs and practicing the people-oriented nature of financial work, rather than encouraging institutions to maintain high rates through formally compliant workarounds. For instance, superficially compliant operations like mall models or membership fees, while not directly violating interest rate stipulations on paper,实质上 raise users' actual financing costs through means like product markups, which runs counter to the regulatory direction of pushing rates downward. "Regulators emphasize 'substance over form,' explicitly opposing all behaviors that circumvent supervision or exploit regulatory loopholes. Such practices not only contradict policy intentions but may also trigger negative public sentiment and invite stricter punitive measures."