Bank of China launched its first fintech innovation regulatory pilot project in Beijing last year. The bank announced plans to expand its regulatory pilot projects in six more cities and districts on April 27.

The bank plans to conduct pilot projects in Shanghai, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Hebei Xiong'an New District, Hangzhou and Suzhou. Ultimately, it aims to improve the financial services in general for the real economy.

The bank believes fintech innovation projects under regulation will continue to protect consumer’s rights. At the same time, it will also help small and micro private enterprises to go through financing difficulties during the pandemic. In its announcement, the bank said:

“We are aiming to amid the pandemic situation and help enterprises to resume work and production.”

Fintech regulatory is part of the major plan in the development of Chinese fintech sector

The bank released “The Fintech Development Plan (2019-2021)” outline right after the Central Economic Work Conference late last year. It revealed the guidance ideology, basic principles, development targets, key missions and guarantee mechanisms” for fintech work over the course of three years.

According to the outline, strength­en­ing fin­tech reg­u­la­tion, es­tab­lish­ing and im­prov­ing a ba­sic rules sys­tem for reg­u­la­tion is one of the major missions for the bank to achieve in three years, stating that:

“The Plan pro­poses that by 2021 China es­tab­lish and im­prove the “four beams and eight pil­lars” for Chi­na’s fin­tech de­vel­op­ment, which in­cludes [...]Ac­cel­er­at­ing the draft­ing of ba­sic reg­u­la­tory rules, mon­i­tor­ing analy­sis and as­sess­ment work; ex­plor­ing fin­tech in­no­va­tion reg­u­la­tory mech­a­nisms and com­pre­hen­sive fi­nan­cial sta­tis­tics; strength­en­ing the spe­cial­i­sa­tion, uni­fi­ca­tion and com­pre­hen­sive­ness of fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tion.”

Cointelegraph reached out to the bank for comment on the details of the expanded pilots but received no comment as of press time. This article will be updated pending a response.