Internet financial regulation should be strengthened
2022-03-24
In addition to the traditional forms of P2P and digital payment, it is a typical form of personal information economy. Internet technology companies use their own platforms and data to rapidly promote financial services, which may bring many problems, such as market monopoly, unfair competition, breaking through regulatory compliance requirements and so on. In this regard, the central economic work conference clearly required that "financial innovation must be carried out under the premise of prudent supervision", "strengthen regulation, improve supervision ability, resolutely oppose monopoly and unfair competition", "improve the legal norms in terms of monopoly identification of platform enterprises, data collection and use management, and consumer rights and interests protection". The development of Internet finance is based on the R & D and application of science and technology. Its competition in the financial market is essentially the competition between the platforms behind it. The platform determines the breadth and depth of Internet financial competition. The core competitiveness of the platform lies in its huge data advantages. Under the demand-oriented background, it can highly concentrate social resources, such as using the dominant market position in the fields of communication, shopping, music and so on to collect user data. On this basis, if it gets involved in the field of Internet finance, there may be a phenomenon of winner take all and dominance. Therefore, the rapid development of Internet finance has brought new challenges to the rule of law. In recent years, there have been many problems in the field of Internet finance, such as "one out of two" phenomenon, illegal issuance of usury, listing of non-conforming financial products and so on. For these chaos, the strong regulatory signals of the platform are intensively released. Recently, there has been a significant increase in anti-monopoly law enforcement cases on the platform. The State Administration of market supervision, the central network information office and other departments have vigorously issued relevant supporting documents and repeatedly proposed to strengthen the regulation of the anti-monopoly law. Internet financial enterprises often use the massive customers owned by all platforms of the group to lock in the large-scale demand market, and then use the Internet-based information dissemination tools to spread the user experience, attract more potential financial consumers, quickly seize the market share with the help of the endogenous strong "brand locking" effect in the consumer market, so as to occupy the dominant position in the financial market, and through continuous stabilization and strengthening, Finally form a dominant market position. Once the dominant position is formed, monopolists will absorb more competitors or cooperate with competitors to develop together and abuse their market dominant position. Therefore, in the development of Internet finance, anti-monopoly law cannot be absent. However, at present, the anti-monopoly law enforcement has the limitations of focusing on legislation and neglecting regulation. Although the current anti-monopoly law has clear provisions on many elements such as monopoly behavior, identification of market dominant position and legal liability of monopolists, due to the complexity of Internet finance, it is difficult to define the relevant market, evaluate the degree of monopoly, abuse of market dominant position and other monopoly behaviors are very hidden, so that it is difficult to regulate and the effect of law enforcement is not significant. From the perspective of antitrust law, the first thing to regulate the development of Internet finance is to maintain the order of industry competition. Due to the wider coverage of Internet finance than physical finance, the behavior of shielding and vicious competition among Internet financial companies will also bring worse negative effects. Fair competition is the core of the good operation of market economy. Only by maintaining the order of industry competition can we effectively allocate resources, while monopoly hinders fair competition, distorts resource allocation and stifles technological progress. In order to reduce transaction costs, we need to build a good market competition order and give full play to the role of market mechanism. Maintaining competition is the original intention of the anti-monopoly law. The anti-monopoly law is applied to regulate the Internet financial industry and make it return to the normal competition order. The second is to protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. The unrestricted expansion of Internet enterprises in the financial field ultimately affects the interests of financial consumers. Some internet financial enterprises infringe on the rights and interests of consumers under the guise of Inclusive Finance. Internet finance has problems such as excessive interest on online lending and illegal debt collection, which involves many rights such as the protection of consumers' privacy, consumers' right to choose, fair trading and so on. By standardizing Internet financial enterprises, clarify their obligations to consumers, especially focus on standardizing transactions with consumers, and adhere to the principles of voluntariness, equality, fairness and good faith, so as to make Internet financial products and services conform to the concept of consumer rights and interests protection. The third is to promote the healthy and stable development of the economy. If internet financial enterprises try to evade regulation by relying on innovative business models and difficult to track network technology, and then over publicize the idea of early consumption and debt survival, in the long run, it may increase the debt ratio of families and small and medium-sized enterprises, bury hidden dangers of systemic risks in the financial market, and is not conducive to the rapid and steady development of the financial field. The State supports and encourages the innovation of Internet platform economy, but innovation is not unlimited. In practice, we must strengthen the regulation of anti-monopoly law, clarify the monopoly boundary, curb the disorderly expansion of capital, and protect the legitimate interests of investors and creditors on the premise of prudent supervision. Promote the return of payment to its original source, and prevent and stop monopoly behavior in the field of Internet financial payment. For society, payment is not only a tool, but also a bridge connecting commodity transactions between buyers and sellers, which is of great significance to the development of the real economy. However, in the payment and settlement market, there are situations in which monopoly agreements are adopted to exclude fair competition, and Internet enterprises abuse their dominant market position to compete for financial customers. Therefore, to prevent the improper market expansion of third-party payment enterprises and stop the formation of their monopoly position in payment and settlement in the field of Internet finance, it is necessary to continue to maintain a strong regulatory attitude towards the payment industry in the process of identifying monopoly behaviors, maintain a high threshold for the deposit of reserves, and take strict disciplinary measures against violators, so as to promote the return of payment origin. Adhere to the business principles of licensed employment and compliant operation, and resolutely resist the concentration of operators in the field of Internet Finance by using the advantages of data. Data advantage is the core competitiveness of Internet financial enterprises. In real life, there are many cases of using their own data advantage to merge and acquire similar competitors at low prices, or join forces to realize the data monopoly of industry customers. Therefore, the focus of antitrust regulation should also be the concentration of business operators in the field of Internet finance. In the review process, we should pay special attention to whether the business activities of enterprises comply with the business principles of licensing and compliant operation according to law, and give warnings, order to suspend business, revoke licenses and other penalties to violators. Strictly control the expansion of Internet financial business and prevent the formation of market oligarchs in the field of Internet finance. The typical manifestation of the expansion of financial business is the establishment of financial holding companies, and then gradually derived into a group financial monopoly oligopoly based on payment. When determining the market dominant position of Internet financial enterprises, we should strictly review whether the establishment of financial holding companies meets the legal conditions and whether related party transactions comply with the regulations, and investigate other factors affecting the market dominant position under the condition of ensuring their sufficient capital, so as to prevent Internet financial enterprises from sharing data internally, resulting in the transmission of risks and the formation of market dominant position, Ultimately damage the legitimate interests of creditors and investors. (Xinhua News Agency)
Edit:Huang Huiqun Responsible editor:Luo Meihua
Source:gmw.cn
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