File photo:Xinhua

Traditional approaches to supervision have over recent years become insufficient to deal with increasingly complex money laundering schemes, China's former central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan said on Friday, calling for the incorporation of emerging technologies including big data into financial regulation.

Speaking at a fintech forum in Beijing, Zhou, former governor of the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, urged contemplation over how to reduce the risks of money laundering and terrorism financing as a result of the application of new technologies.

Addressing the insufficiency of traditional supervisory means in handling money laundering activities, Zhou, currently president of the China Society for Finance and Banking, said that the source and flow of anonymous funds are difficult to track, which makes money laundering activities hard to stop.

Similarly, many data dealings on the dark web and deep web such as drug deals, the sale of fake documents, human trafficking, and illegal gambling ought to be put under strict control, the former central bank chief suggested, reckoning the use of emerging digital technologies in regulatory terms would play a significant part in user identification and the prevention of unlawful transactions while cracking down on money laundering.

Big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, among other technologies should be actively tapped to flesh out financial regulatory toolkits, thereby enhancing the capability to indentify, prevent and resolve cross-sector and cross-market risks, he went on to say.

Global Times