Yixin Summoned for Talks: Co-lending Compliance Storm Arrives, Transformation Path Faces New Test

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On March 13, 2026, the National Financial Regulatory Administration officially held a meeting with five platform operators, including Yixin’s Yixianghua, addressing prominent issues in internet lending businesses. The focus was on core pain points such as marketing promotion, fee disclosure, and personal information protection, signaling a strong regulatory stance on “full-chain compliance and strict consumer protection.”

As an organization once celebrated as “China’s No. 1 P2P company” and transitioning from a P2P leader to a tech service provider, Yixin’s summons was not accidental. Behind it are unresolved compliance risks and profit pressures during its transformation, reflecting the industry’s deep restructuring under strict regulation.

The Meeting Targets Core Regulatory Issues and the Five “Persistent Problems” in Lending

Yixin’s summons marks a key step in the regulatory department’s phased approach: first focusing on “scenarios, then core” in the lending industry. Previously, on February 13, 2026, the Financial Supervision and Administration, together with the Market Supervision Administration and the People’s Bank of China, held talks with six travel platforms including Ctrip and Amap, targeting misleading marketing in “scenario-based lending.” A month later, the focus shifted directly to the core of the lending model, targeting platforms like Yixin, demonstrating a deep grasp of the industry’s operational logic—where surface issues are “appearances,” and compliance loopholes are the “real problem.”

According to the regulatory notice, the meeting outlined five core requirements for five platforms, including Yixin, each addressing industry pain points and covering the entire lending process, clearly defining compliance boundaries.

1. Standardize marketing, prohibit misleading terms like “low interest” and “instant approval” to prevent encouraging excessive borrowing;

2. Clearly disclose interest and fee details, including total financing costs such as interest rates, service fees, and membership fees, avoiding splitting or hiding actual costs;

3. Protect personal information, strictly adhere to the Personal Information Protection Law, and prevent illegal collection, use, or disclosure of user data;

4. Conduct compliant debt collection, banning violence, threats, harassment, and prohibiting entrusting unqualified third parties with collection activities;

5. Improve complaint mechanisms, ensure smooth channels for complaints, and respond promptly and properly to consumer disputes.

Senior researcher Su Xiaorui from Su Xi Zhi Yan stated that this meeting is a milestone in the industry’s governance following the implementation of new lending regulations, marking a shift of regulatory focus from licensed financial institutions to cooperative internet lending platforms. Consumer protection is no longer solely the responsibility of licensed entities; lending platforms must also fulfill their primary responsibilities and implement compliance throughout the process.

Compliance Concerns and Systemic Weaknesses Behind Fines and Complaints

The summons exposes longstanding compliance weaknesses within Yixin. Public information shows that Yixin’s subsidiaries have faced multiple regulatory penalties for compliance violations, and user complaints remain high, indicating risks across the entire business process.

On May 26, 2025, Yixin’s Hainan Yixin Puhui Microloan Co., Ltd. (referred to as “Yixin Microloan”) was fined 625,000 yuan by the Hainan branch of the People’s Bank of China for violations related to credit information collection, provision, inquiry, and management. The then-acting General Manager Wu Mourun was fined 100,000 yuan. The penalty exceeded the maximum 500,000 yuan limit stipulated by regulations, indicating serious credit information management issues and clear vulnerabilities in Yixin’s credit data handling.

User complaints further highlight operational chaos. On the Black Cat Complaint platform, over 24,000 complaints have been lodged against Yixin’s Yixianghua platform, with recent reports of “checking credit limits and then borrowing.”

Some users reported that merely testing their credit limit via ads resulted in forced disbursement of 9,100 yuan without applying for a loan. Others received unexpected loans of over 40,000 yuan from “Xi’an Bank Yixianghua” after linking their bank cards, with annual interest rates approaching 36%, touching regulatory red lines. Additionally, some complaints allege that Yixianghua’s contract signing locations are designed to evade regional lending restrictions, revealing obvious compliance flaws. These complaints point to inducement mechanisms in Yixin’s product design, where the “check limit” button essentially functions as a loan authorization, severely infringing on consumers’ right to informed choice and potentially breaching regulatory boundaries.

Behind these compliance issues are profit pressures and imbalanced business structures during Yixin’s transformation.

Once a P2P leader, after tighter regulation in 2018, Yixin was forced to pivot. In 2019, it integrated its lending and funding platforms into its listed company structure. After rebranding as “Yirendai Jinke,” it aimed to build a comprehensive financial service platform. Despite adopting a tech facade, Yixin’s revenue still heavily depends on lending-related activities. The sharp decline in insurance brokerage and slowing e-commerce growth have left the company overly reliant on lending. In 2024, Yixin’s contingent liabilities and provisions reached 869 million yuan, a 3,122% increase from 27 million yuan in 2023. Rising compliance costs have directly eaten into profits, creating a dilemma of “compliance rectification versus profit growth.”

The Impact of the Meeting and the Industry’s “Fundamental Reshaping”

The summons of Yixin and four other platforms is not merely a compliance reminder but a fundamental reshaping of the lending industry’s operational logic. Coupled with the regulator’s previous “reduce interest rates, limit scale, strengthen autonomy” directives, the clear regulatory intent is to: squeeze high-interest arbitrage space, promote fee transparency, eliminate disguised usury; prevent risk spillover by strengthening personal data protection and collection compliance; guide platform customer bases upward to reduce joint liability risks and systemic financial dangers.

For Yixin, this summons presents multiple challenges.

First, it must strictly implement the five regulatory requirements, rectifying violations in marketing, fee disclosure, collection, and other areas, which will increase compliance costs and may temporarily impact lending scale. Second, it must accelerate business restructuring to reduce over-reliance on lending, explore new profit sources, or risk being phased out in industry reshuffles.

Yixin has stated it will fully implement the rectification measures, standardize operations, and strengthen user rights protection, but the effectiveness remains subject to regulatory review and market validation.

Overall, this industry-wide regulatory push will drive profound change. First, scale contraction is inevitable, with regulators emphasizing “lending scale only to decrease.” Licensed banks and trusts are tightening cooperation thresholds, and “controlling new growth and reducing existing volume” is the industry consensus. Second, complaint volumes are expected to decline as fee transparency and collection compliance improve, easing long-standing consumer disputes. Third, industry segmentation will intensify: leading platforms with strong compliance and risk control will consolidate market share, while smaller players lacking core competitiveness will gradually exit.

Industry Lessons: Compliance Is King; Lending Industry Must End “Wild Growth”

Yixin’s summons marks the end of the “wild growth” era in the lending industry and serves as a wake-up call for all lending institutions. Since the implementation of the new “Notice on Strengthening the Management of Commercial Bank Internet Lending Business” in October 2025, regulatory enforcement has deepened. “Compliance first, consumer protection prioritized” has become the industry’s core development theme.

For lending institutions, only proactively aligning with regulatory requirements can ensure sustainable growth. They must comprehensively review business processes, prioritize rectifying misleading marketing, fee opacity, and illegal collection issues, strengthen personal data protection and risk management, and fulfill their primary responsibilities. Additionally, they should move away from blindly expanding scale, optimize business structures, enhance autonomous risk control, and shift from “traffic-driven” to “compliance-driven” development, returning to the essence of inclusive finance.

For consumers, tighter regulation means a safer, more transparent borrowing environment. They should verify lenders’ qualifications before borrowing, carefully review annualized interest rates and fee details, refuse to sign opaque contracts, avoid providing sensitive personal information to unverified platforms, and promptly retain evidence if their rights are infringed. When necessary, they can report to the National Consumer Association’s 315 platform, the China Internet Finance Association, or regulatory authorities to defend their rights lawfully.

Yixin’s summons is not only a compliance warning for one company but also a systemic governance signal for the entire lending industry.

As regulatory efforts intensify, the industry will gradually shed its “wild growth” phase and enter a new stage of regulated development. Whether Yixin can overcome compliance difficulties and achieve high-quality transformation, and how the industry will balance compliance, profitability, regulation, and innovation, remain to be seen. But one thing is certain: only by adhering to compliance, safeguarding user rights, and maintaining integrity can companies stand firm in fierce market competition and achieve a win-win situation for regulators, the industry, and consumers.