海外之声丨科技巨头的金融监管
导读
科技巨头凭借各自的电子商务、社交媒体平台等渠道获取大量用户数据，形成网络效应，进而利用这一效应形成良性循环、实现业务的快速扩张。以数据—网络—活动循环（data-network-activities loop, DNA）的强化优势为基础，一些科技巨头已经涉足金融服务，包括支付、货币管理等。到目前为止，金融服务只是其全球业务的一小部分，但考虑到他们的体量和用户范围，科技巨头进入金融业有可能引发行业剧变。
除了金融风险、消费者保护等传统的政策风险，市场力量集中度和数据治理的新挑战也随之而来。由于平台竞争效应，一旦科技巨头主导了市场，最终由消费者承担的交易手续费只会继续走高。为此，央行和其他金融监管机构应当联合制定政策、加强支付体系监管、打击垄断行为并提高支付体系的效率。科技巨头所带来的不只是市场力量的集中，还有数据的集中。基于庞大的用户群体，这些科技企业拥有海量的用户数据，从而引发用户隐私泄露的担忧。
为应对以上种种风险，完善金融监管成为必然。但目前的金融服务监管框架多是基于活动而非实体，只有中国、欧盟和美国制定了“基于实体的”具体规则，比如中国国家市场监督管理总局发布的平台经济领域反垄断指南、欧盟的《数字市场法案》，旨在防止市场力量集中、打击反竞争行为。此外，“系统重要性金融机构”的风险溢出效应更是需要各层级的金融、非金融机构协同合作。总而言之，央行和其它金融监管机构必须未雨绸缪、制定政策，并进行跨界、跨国合作。
作者 | 奥古斯汀·卡斯滕斯（国际清算银行总裁）、斯梯恩·克雷森斯（国际清算银行金融稳定政策部门负责人）、费尔南多·雷斯托伊（国际清算银行金融稳定研究所主席）、申铉松（国际清算银行研究主管）
英文原文如下：
Key takeaways
· Big tech firms entering financial services can scale up rapidly with user data from their existing business lines in e-commerce and social media, and by harnessing the inherent network effects in digital services.
· In addition to traditional policy concerns such as financial risks, consumer protection and operational resilience, the entry of big techs into financial services gives rise to new challenges surrounding the concentration of market power and data governance.
· The current framework for regulating financial services follows an activities-based approach where providers must hold licences for specific business lines. There is scope to address the new policy challenges by developing specific entity-based rules, as proposed in several key jurisdictions – notably the European Union.
The rapid growth of big tech firms in financial services presents various policy challenges. Some are variations of familiar themes that lie squarely within the traditional scope of central banks and financial regulators, such as the mitigation of financial risks and the oversight of operational resilience and consumer protection. Assessing big techs’ resilience through a financial cycle will necessitate more systematic monitoring and understanding of big tech business models on the part of the authorities, for instance on whether learning algorithms may inject systematic biases to the detriment of financial stability.
As well as issues that arise from traditional financial stability concerns, there are new and unfamiliar challenges stemming from the potential for excessive concentration of market power, as well as broader issues concerning data governance. These new challenges lie outside the traditional scope of the central bank’s remit, but they can nevertheless impinge on the central bank’s core mission of ensuring sound money as well as the integrity and smooth functioning of the payment system. While some central banks’ oversight authority includes the competitive functioning and efficiency of the payment system, their mandates do not normally encompass the broad range of competition and data privacy issues that arise in relation to the activities of big techs in financial services. Nevertheless, since the central bank issues the unit of account in the economy, trust in the currency rests ultimately on the trust placed in the central bank itself. Any impact on the integrity of the monetary system arising from the emergence of dominant platforms ought to be a key concern for the central bank.
This Bulletin reviews the policy challenges for central banks and financial regulators in their oversight of the activity of big tech firms in financial services, especially as it relates to the payment system. Traditional demarcations that separate the roles of financial regulators from those of competition authorities and data privacy regulators may become blurred in the case of big techs in finance. Rules that were formulated with specific financial stability risks in mind (credit and liquidity risk, market risk etc) may be inadequate for addressing the unique combination of policy concerns to which big techs give rise. These concerns bear on the central bank’s core mission to maintain the integrity of the monetary system. In this regard, the central bank should work more closely with competition and data privacy authorities.Big techs’ growing footprint in the financial system
The market for retail payments is a particularly stark example of the potential for rapid concentration. Graph 1 (left-hand panel) illustrates how rapidly the user base of big techs can take off through the DNA loop once a critical mass of users has been established. The growth of user numbers may also be reinforced through merger and acquisition activity whereby smaller potential competitors are absorbed into the ecosystem of services around the core big tech platform.
In some jurisdictions, big techs have gained a substantial presence in the retail payment system (FSB (2019a,b)). For instance, in China the two big tech payment firms jointly account for 94% of the mobile payments market (Graph 1, right-hand panel). The rapid growth in payment transactions within a few years shows how quickly big tech firms can establish their footprints. Beyond payments, big techs have also become lenders to individuals and small businesses in some markets as well as offering insurance and wealth management services (Cornelli et al (2020)).
Even in those jurisdictions where big techs do not currently have a dominant position in the financial system, their potential for rapid growth warrants close attention from central banks. Stable coin projects and other big tech initiatives could be a game changer for the monetary system if their entry leads to closed loop systems reinforced by network effects from data drawn from social media or e-commerce platforms. Strong network effects and the entrenchment of closed networks could lead to a fragmentation of payment infrastructures to the detriment of the public good nature of money. Given the potential for rapid change, the absence of currently dominant platforms should not be a source of comfort for central banks. Rather, they should anticipate developments and formulate policy based on possible scenarios where big tech initiatives may already have reshaped the payment system, instead of focusing on the market structure of the payment system as it currently stands.Market dominance and data governance
Entrenchment of market power also carries implications for the high costs of payment services. High merchant service costs associated with credit and debit cards have remained one of the stubborn shortcomings of the existing payment system, although the costs vary across jurisdictions. These costs are not immediately visible to consumers, as charges are usually levied on the merchants, who are not allowed to pass these fees on to consumers. However, the ultimate incidence of these costs depends on how much of the merchant fees are passed on to consumers through higher prices at the checkout (Mariotto and Verdier (2017)). A possible concern is that when big tech firms achieve a dominant position, the economics of platform competition may lead to merchant fees that are even higher than the high costs that exist currently. Merchant fees as high as 4% have been reported in some cases.
Competition policy does not normally fall within the central bank’s purview. Some central banks are directed to consider the competitive functioning of the financial system (eg Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank of England) or its efficiency(eg Bank of Korea, Netherlands Bank) in implementing their policies. In any case, the central bank’s oversight of the payment system and its mission to ensure its efficiency mean that there is a strong case for the central bank to work closely with the competition authorities.
Another important policy imperative flows from issues surrounding data governance. Beyond the economic consequences of market dominance resulting from the concentration of data, there is arguably a more basic imperative of ensuring privacy against unjustified intrusion by commercial actors (and, for that matter, government actors). Data privacy therefore has attributes of a basic right. For these reasons, the issue of data governance has emerged as a key public policy concern.
When US consumers were asked in a systematic survey whom they trust to safeguard their personal data, the respondents reported that they trust big techs the least (Graph2, left-hand panel). The surveys reveal a number of concerns, but the potential for abuse of data emerges as an important element that runs through the responses (Armantier, Doerr, Frost,Fuster and Shue (2021)). Similar patterns are present in other countries (right-hand panel).
Data governance lies outside the traditional policy scope of central banks. However, as with the competition imperative and the need for dialogue with competition authorities, the entry of big techs into financial services also necessitates close coordination on the part of the central bank with data governance regulators. Areas where central banks and data governance authorities can usefully contribute their respective analyses include:
Open banking and other data portability rules. Central banks and regulators can assess whether there are asymmetries between banks and big techs regarding data access. They can assess whether differential regulatory treatment of data for different institutions creates competitive, consumer protection or systemic concerns. An example is the requirement in the EU under the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) that banks share payment data with big techs. Meanwhile, big techs, under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), need not share their data with banks in a similarly useable format.
Protocols regarding data transfers. Central banks and regulators can assess how barriers to data transfers from domestic regulation or from rules on cross-border data flows (data localisation) may affect the benefits and risks of big techs relative to traditional providers. They can also consider how big techs and traditional providers access personal data in the existing protocols of payment systems, credit registries etc.
Role of public infrastructures. Central banks and regulators can assess how public policy objectives could be attained by public infrastructures that include rules on data governance. For instance, digital identity systems that underlie the design of fast retail payment systems and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and associated application programming interfaces (APIs) can be designed to ensure that user control over data translates into effective competition and robust data governance (BIS (2020, 2021)).
Activities-based and entity-based regulation
The current framework for regulation in financial services outside the banking and insurance sectors follows an activities-based approach where providers must hold licences for specific business lines. In the case of payments, as with other business lines, the licensing requirements vary by jurisdiction. In the United States, the payments business is governed by “money transmitter” licensing requirements that set standards on the fitness of business owners and operators, but such requirements can vary considerably across states. For the European Union (EU), licensing requirements are governed by rules that apply to payment institutions (PI) or e-money institutions (EMI) (Restoy (2021); Crisanto et al (2021)).
Activities-based regulation is grounded on the principle of “same activity, same regulation”. In principle, the consistent application of activities-based licensing requirements ensures that innovations aimed at regulatory arbitrage and exploiting gaps in the regulatory framework can be minimised.
Nevertheless, given the unique set of challenges that are thrown up by big techs’ entry into financial services, a purely activity-based framework for regulation is likely to fall short of an adequate response to these policy challenges. Arguably, the current licensing requirements on payment service providers, aimed at ensuring the fitness of directors and consumer protection, were formulated with small remittance service providers in mind and will fall short of addressing the very different and far-reaching challenges associated with dominant big tech platforms that can harness the DNA loop.
For these reasons, there is scope to address the policy challenges of big techs by developing specific entity-based rules that complement activities-based requirements (Restoy(2021); Carstens (2021)).Elements of an entity-based approach for big techs are already taking root in several key jurisdictions –notably in the EU, China and the United States. These initiatives have been led mainly by competition authorities and legislatures, but the issues they raise impinge deeply on the mission of central banks and financial regulators.
In the EU, the proposed Digital Markets Act (DMA) has specific requirements on the conduct of firms that are considered to be “gate keepers”. These requirements include obligations in areas such as interoperability, access criteria, equal treatment of vendors and data portability. In China, the State Council, especially the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR)issued anti-monopoly guidelines for “internet platforms”, and the People’s Bank of China (PBC) introduced specific rules preventing restrictive practices by non-bank payment service providers. In the United States, the US House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law released an antitrust report with recommendations to reduce anti-competitive behaviour of big techs. This has been followed by several legislative initiatives which are currently under discussion. The common thread running through these recent proposals are provisions aimed at preventing data concentration and anti-competitive practices by big techs.
For central banks, a natural follow-up to those initiatives would be to study the potential systemic relevance of big techs and the need to introduce specific safeguards to guarantee sufficient operational resilience. That may be especially relevant for big techs offering systemically important payment services to a significant section of the population. Currently, the designation of “systemically important financial institution” is almost exclusively applied to traditional financial institutions such as banks or insurers. In some jurisdictions, there are formal processes to designate financial institutions and financial market utilities as being systemically important. However, the current framework does not address the potential (possibly global) systemic impact of big tech operations and of possible spillover effects to the financial sector and across all of the activities that big techs perform. For these reasons, there is a need for close coordination among different financial and non-financial regulators, at both the national and global level.
Thus far, there have been limited regulatory actions in domains other than in competition. An exception is the revision of the regulation of financial holding companies (FHCs) in China towards requiring all companies holding two or more types of financial institutions (not necessarily including a commercial bank) that satisfy specific size thresholds to apply for an FHC licence. The PBC may also require the formation of an FHC in accordance with macroprudential regulatory requirements, even if the size thresholds are not met. FHCs are subject to capital requirements at the level of the holding company and the financial subsidiaries, as well as a capital replenishment mechanism and bail-in measures (eg transfer of equity). These rules are aimed at ensuring that the shock-absorbing resources of systemically important big tech subsidiaries are in place where they are needed. FHCs must also satisfy a number of other requirements on risk exposures and governance. FHCs are supervised by the PBC, which will establish regulatory information-sharing arrangements between it and other relevant regulators.
The entry of big tech firms into the payment system has underscored how rapidly digital innovation can impinge on central banks’ traditional concerns: sound money and the smooth functioning of the payment system. Given the multi-faceted nature of the public policy challenges that extend to competition and data governance imperatives, central banks and financial regulators should invest with urgency in monitoring and understanding these developments. In this way, they can be prepared to act quickly when needed. Cooperation with other domestic authorities and with counterparts in other jurisdictions will be important in this regard.
References
Armantier, O, S Doerr, J Frost, A Fuster and K Shue(2021): “Whom do consumerstrust with their data? US survey evidence”, BIS Bulletin, no 42, May.
Bank for International Settlements (2019): “Big tech in finance: opportunities and risks”, Chapter 3,Annual Economic Report.
______ (2020): “Central banks and payments in the digital era”, Annual Economic Report 2020,Chapter III.______ (2021): “CBDCs: an opportunity for the monetary system”, Annual Economic Report 2021,Chapter III. Carstens, A (2021): “Public policy toward big techs in finance”, speech at the Asia School of Business
Conversations on Central Banking webinar “Finance as information”, 27 January.
Chen, S, S Doerr, J Frost, L Gambacorta and H S Shin (2021): “The fintech gender gap”, BIS Working Papers, no 931, March.
Cornelli, G, J Frost, L Gambacorta, R Rau, R Wardropand T Ziegler (2020): “Fintech and big tech credit: a new database”, BIS Working Papers, no 887.
Crisanto, J C, J Ehrentraud and M Fabian (2021): “Big techs in finance: regulatory approaches and policy options”, FSI Briefs,no 12, March.
Croxson, K, J Frost, L Gambacorta and T Valletti: “Platform-based business models and financial inclusion”, BIS Papers, forthcoming.
Financial Stability Board (FSB) (2019a):FinTech and market structure in financial services: Market developments and potential financial stability implications, February.
——— (2019b),Big Tech in finance: Market developments and potential financial stability implications, December.
Frost, J, L Gambacorta, Y Huang, H S Shin and P Zbinden (2019): “Big Tech and the changing structure of financial intermediation”, Economic Policy, vol 34, no 100.
Mariotto, C, and M Verdier (2017): “Who pays forcard payments: a general model on the role of interchange fees”, Review of Network Economics, vol 16.
Restoy, F (2021): “Fintech regulation: how to achieve a level playing field”, FSI Occasional Papers, no 17,February.
Reuters (2020): “Brazil antitrust watchdog questions Facebook’s Whats App payment fees”, 28 July.、
编译 张赢月
编辑 刘嘉璐
来源 BIS Bulletin
责编 李锦璇、蒋旭
监制 朱霜霜、董熙君
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