AI Reshapes Financial Consumer Protection Logic: From "Passive Defense" to "Active Offense"

Ask AI · How can AI technology help financial institutions proactively warn of risks?

Southern Finance Reporter Pang Cheng, Ong Rongtao, Guangzhou Report

As AI technology shifts from proof of concept to large-scale deployment, the development logic of protecting financial consumer rights (hereafter referred to as “financial consumer protection”) is undergoing a transformative change—from the traditional “passive acceptance and post-incident handling” defensive model to an “active warning and full-process risk management” proactive approach.

Behind this transformation are both urgent industry needs and clear policy guidance. On one hand, recent years have seen persistent outbreaks of financial consumer scams, with AI technology not only creating new types of risks but also becoming a core tool for institutions to break through consumer protection dilemmas; on the other hand, the People’s Bank of China explicitly called for “deepening industry-technology integration, actively and prudently promoting AI applications in finance, and unleashing the momentum of digital and intelligent development” at the 2026 technology work conference.

In January this year, Southern Finance Media Group launched the “315 Financial Consumer Rights Protection Excellent Case Collection,” inviting regulatory agencies, financial institutions, social organizations, and others to submit innovative practices and benchmark achievements in the field of financial consumer protection. The goal is to promote compliance models and jointly build a fair and trustworthy financial consumer environment.

By reviewing typical cases collected and combining interviews and observations, it is evident that the industry ecosystem of financial consumer protection is being reshaped at both ends of AI’s offensive and defensive capabilities.

AI Technology Creates New Risks; Regulatory Reinforcement Guides Consumer Protection

As AI technology penetrates various industries, new risks in finance intertwine with traditional scams, forcing the real-world situation of financial consumer protection to accelerate technological iteration.

The China Consumers Association’s 2025 complaint analysis report shows that complaints about financial services handled by consumer associations nationwide reached 14,791, a year-on-year increase of over 118%, ranking in the top ten for service complaints for the first time.

Non-bank financial institutions are the main source of complaint growth. The report notes that complaints about non-bank financial credit have surged significantly. With the rapid expansion of the consumer finance market and the increasing popularity of various internet credit products, while meeting consumers’ capital turnover needs, a series of new issues have also emerged.

“Recently, complaints about internet financial services have been rising rapidly, with related complaint volumes doubling year-on-year, and non-bank credit platforms being the hardest hit,” said Zeng Gang, chief expert and director of the Shanghai Financial and Development Laboratory. The most common issues reported by consumers include: opaque borrowing costs, actual interest rates far exceeding advertised rates, excessive collection and even leakage of personal information, unregulated collection methods, and complaint channels that are virtually ineffective.

Behind these frequent phenomena lies a dilemma faced by traditional consumer protection models in the AI era. On one hand, financial “black and gray” industries have upgraded their methods using AI technology, while some financial institutions still rely on traditional manual review and rule-based risk control, creating an imbalance in offense and defense; on the other hand, past consumer protection models mainly responded passively, with the pain point of “fighting fires after incidents” and “preventing fires at the source” being overlooked. They can only react to complaints and disputes after they occur, unable to identify risks in advance or resolve hidden dangers.

For a long time, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has maintained a high-pressure stance. In 2025, it investigated 701 securities and futures violations, imposing fines and confiscations totaling 15.47 billion yuan. Earlier this year, the CSRC’s 2026 systematic work conference explicitly emphasized “adhering to strict law enforcement, improving regulatory effectiveness and deterrence.”

The Xinjiang Securities Regulatory Bureau issued a notice warning that recently, criminals have used AI face-swapping, voice synthesis, and other technologies to generate videos of well-known investors in bulk, luring investors into private groups with claims of “free stock recommendations” or “insider information,” and then conducting illegal stock recommendation activities. These scams are characterized by realistic technical disguise, covert traffic diversion tactics, and false entity credentials.

Since the beginning of this year, regulatory agencies including Jiangsu, Hainan, and Xinjiang Securities Regulatory Bureaus have issued risk alerts warning of new scams using AI technology.

AI Drives a Shift to “Proactive Action” in Financial Consumer Protection

Faced with new challenges in consumer protection in the AI era, many financial institutions are leveraging AI as a core tool, deeply embedding consumer protection work into the entire business process, and promoting a fundamental shift from “passive defense” to “proactive action.”

Reviewing typical cases collected, the practices of Zhijian Consumer Finance, Ping An Bank’s Auto Consumer Finance Center, Wanlian Securities, and Yingmi Fund represent exploration directions in AI-driven consumer protection across the four major sectors: consumer finance, banking, securities, and funds.

Zhijian Consumer Finance’s core breakthrough in consumer protection is the innovative integration of the traditional Chinese medicine concept of “preventive treatment” into the protection system, creating the industry’s first full-process digital and intelligent consumer protection solution based on its self-developed “Zhilu Large Model” — the “Consumer Protection Intelligent Agent.”

Before risks occur, Zhijian uses AI to build customer insight systems and anti-fraud model matrices that enable real-time monitoring of risks throughout the customer’s entire business cycle. Last year, they successfully blocked over 22,000 customers from telecom scams; when the system detects potential complaints or financial difficulties, it proactively intervenes with personalized relief policies such as negotiated repayment, helping 123,000 temporarily distressed customers with suspension of collection efforts and a 7% year-on-year increase in interest waivers.

In auto finance, the main pain points in consumer complaints are cumbersome mortgage and release procedures, repeated trips, and long processing cycles. Ping An Bank’s Auto Consumer Finance Center’s solution is to reconstruct business processes through technology.

Leveraging China Ping An’s technological advantages, the institution launched the “Ping An Police E-Connect” smart vehicle management service, which connects directly with the police traffic management system to digitize the entire mortgage and release process. Previously taking 3-5 days, the process can now be completed in as little as 15 minutes, replacing manual trips with “data-driven automation,” solving the problem of consumers having to make multiple trips and repeat procedures.

For securities firms, preventing illegal securities activities is a core battleground for consumer protection. Traditional investor education faces issues of “scattered outreach and inaccurate reach.” Wanlian Securities, centered on AI technology, has built a “precision drip-feed, full coverage” and “personalized” investor protection system.

For example, their online investor education platform “Million Fans Academy” uses AI to analyze multi-dimensional data such as investor age, experience, risk preference, and behavior patterns, creating dynamic intelligent profiles to deliver personalized educational content.

They also implement full lifecycle investor education, designing differentiated engagement plans for novice, active trader, and long-term holder clients, supporting digital guidance from investment initiation to rational investing.

When AI agents can generate thousands of words of marketing copy in seconds, traditional compliance review modes relying on manual checks and passive responses are no longer sufficient to handle explosive content growth in the AI era. Yingmi Fund’s innovative practice is to pre-embed compliance pre-approval capabilities using AI.

Based on ten years of data from fund sales and investment advisory work, Yingmi Fund developed the “Content Compliance Review Skill” tool, which contains over 100 high-frequency violation rules for fund promotion and recommendation. Relying on a database of over 80,000 historical review cases and the ACE (Agent Context Engineering) architecture, it can accurately identify issues such as expected return claims, covert capital preservation hints, and prohibited extreme words, while providing actionable modification suggestions.

Yingmi’s data shows that, under traditional manual review, evaluating a marketing material takes about 70 minutes on average. With AI collaboration, the process is shortened to about 8 minutes per piece, improving efficiency by over 80%.

From industry-wide practices, whether it’s full-process risk control, business process reengineering, targeted investor education, or pre-approval compliance, leading institutions are fundamentally using AI to shift consumer protection from the end of the business to the entire process, truly transforming from “passive defense” to “proactive action.” Looking ahead, as AI technology continues to evolve, it will further reshape the development logic of financial consumer protection. The core principle behind this technology—“customer-centric” protection—remains the industry’s fundamental guiding principle.