THE government will launch a five-year plan to build a national financial database with a focus on cross-sector products and important institutions, including holding firms, in China’s latest measure to curb systemic financial risk, the State Council said yesterday.

The State Council added it will also create a balance sheet for the entire financial system covering banking, securities and insurance institutions and use it as the foundation for macro-economy leverage estimation, according to a guidance released online late yesterday.

The existing system lacks sufficient monitoring and risk warning of certain key areas that “operate beyond the statistics system,” such as cross-sector financial activity, systematically important financial institutions and financial holding companies, the State Council said in the statement.

The People’s Bank of China will lead the effort and set up a work team to coordinate with other financial regulators.

From 2018 to 2019, the government will improve statistics of key areas including asset management products, systematically important financial institutions, financial holding companies, as well as bond, currency and foreign exchange markets to more effectively identify system-wide risks, it said.

From 2020 to 2022, the government will set up statistics and monitoring programs to watch local financial organizations and online finance firms for the creation of an advanced and complete national financial database.

On Sunday, Vice Premier Liu He said that China would win the battle against financial risk, Xinhua reported.

Liu made the comments at the establishment ceremony for the country’s new banking and insurance regulator, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC).

China will push forward financial supervision reform, tackling problems such as cross-regulation and the lack of supervision, Xinhua quoted Liu as saying.

(SD-Agencies)