2.1. Traditional Transaction Monitoring System
The objective of financial supervision is not only the criterion for evaluating the quality of financial supervision, but also the basis for regulators to take supervisory actions and the premise for realizing effective financial supervision. [
3]The goals of financial supervision can be divided into general goals and specific goals. The objectives of financial regulation are threefold: to maintain financial security, stability and good financial order; Preventing monopolies in the financial sector to maintain financial efficiency; Protecting the interests of investors and depositors. [
4]Supervision is to take into account the three goals of safety, efficiency and depositors’ interests, and adjust the focus of supervision goals accordingly with the changes in economic and financial situations. In this regard, the emphasis of Internet financial regulation is different from that of traditional financial regulation.
(1) Traditional financial regulation is based on functional regulation theory
Traditional and Internet financial regulation, as institutional arrangements, fundamentally aim to correct financial market failures caused by risks, reduce these risks, and improve financial efficiency. Both regulations aim to reduce transaction costs caused by economic uncertainty to the greatest extent. From the perspective of risk prevention, supervision must first focus on tracing the source of risk, so as to form the theoretical basis of supervision. The most essential risks of traditional finance are credit risk and high leverage risk, which arise from people’s limited rationality and opportunism tendency. [
5]Therefore, the most fundamental aspect of traditional financial regulation is to reduce and correct people’s limited rationality and opportunism in order to minimize financial uncertainty. The traditional financial threshold is high, especially the quality of investors and consumers involved in high-risk business is relatively high, and the more important content of supervision is to protect the interests of the largest number of depositors through the prevention of credit risks. [
6]To a large extent, the emergence of traditional financial supervision is due to the theory of financial fragility. In reality, the objects of traditional financial supervision are real various financial institutions, which have already possessed a huge scale and system after years of development. The function of these financial institutions as economic intermediaries or capital intermediaries is very powerful. Therefore, the traditional financial regulation has been based on the functional regulation theory from the very beginning, focusing on correcting opportunism and paying attention to the supervision of legal institutions and risk supervision. With the development of regulatory economics, there are still differences between functional supervision and institutional supervision in the academic circle, and traditional financial supervision is showing an increasingly diversified theoretical tendency. However, with traditional financial institutions still existing and thriving today, I think functional supervision theory is still the main theoretical principle that traditional financial supervision should follow.
(2) Internet financial regulation is based on the new regulatory theory
Because our country has been in the financial repression environment for a long time, Internet finance has carried out more aggressive regulatory arbitrage than traditional finance. Its development, for a long time the traditional financial system is too large [
7], small and micro enterprises financing difficulties and lack of investment channels, an “extra-legal” supplement, in essence can even be said to be the development and extension of private finance with high-tech means. The essence of Internet finance is still a financial contractual relationship or a lending contractual relationship. Financial development and financial risk cannot be separated or opposed, but should be reflected in the matching of returns and risks. The Internet financial risk is also a credit risk in essence, especially for the business with financial leverage transactions, which is widely involved in traditional finance. If we pursue this source of risk, compared with traditional financial risks, these financial products and models have a short time and change quickly, and there is no fixed routine and ready-made rules to restrict and supervise.
However, in reality, the huge capital supply and demand market is quite attractive to subjects without formal financial licenses, so there is a profit-seeking behavior to circumvent regulation, which increases the information cost and transaction cost of the financial market, increases the uncertainty, and then increases the risk. [
8]From the perspective of matching risk and return, the regulator should focus on not “preventing failure”, but providing a better environment and more transparent disclosure rules, so that the risk-return of Internet financial investment can be more easily identified by investors, and the supervision should focus on making Internet finance transparent and legalized, and incorporated into the formal regulatory system to eliminate the mismatch between risk and return. Therefore, Internet financial regulation should pay more attention to the education and protection of financial consumers and investors. [
9]The “twin peaks” theory, which represents the new international financial regulation theory, emphasizes equal emphasis on risk regulation and consumer protection. Therefore, Internet financial regulation should be based on this theory from the beginning, focusing on correcting limited rationality, focusing on natural person supervision, developing supervision, and exerting the positive role of Internet finance on the real economy through supervision. Furthermore, Traditional financial regulation indirectly serves economic development by preventing risks, while Internet financial regulation is more direct in promoting the development of the real economy.
2.2. Traditional Finance Relies on Mature Traditional Regulatory Standards and Means
Along with the deepening of the reform of financial institutions and financial markets, China’s financial supervision has tended to mature. On the basis of fully studying the development of the domestic financial industry and reasonably drawing lessons from the experience of financial supervision in developed countries, the three committees have formed relatively mature supervision methods and rules.
1. Relatively clear regulatory quantitative standards. Since traditional financial transactions mainly rely on the medium of financial institutions for financing and other aspects, transaction behaviors are more dependent on paper texts for regulation and operation. As a medium of financial transactions, financial institutions can collect their trading behavior and financial data information relatively easily, which provides conditions for regulators to study information and make decisions. The regulatory rules focus on strict requirements on financial industry capital, such as the Basel Agreement stipulates that the capital adequacy ratio of banks shall not be less than 8% and the core capital adequacy ratio shall not be less than 4%[
10]. In addition, with the development of the financial industry, the Basel Agreement has been continuously revised, and the capital adequacy standard has been continuously improved. Basel II includes operational risk measurement into risk capital, and proposes basic index method and internal rating method, both of which are based on quantitative indicators and a large amount of internal data. Basel III also put forward specific ratio requirements for loan-to-deposit ratio and loan-to-loan ratio, and also increased new liquidity regulatory indicators such as net stable financing ratio and liquidity coverage ratio.
2. Relatively simple and fixed regulatory measures. The three major regulatory means of traditional financial regulation are market access, on-site inspection and off-site supervision based on regulatory rules. In terms of market access methods, due to the leverage role of the financial industry, combined with the existence of systemic risks and systemically important financial institutions, traditional financial supervision has a naturally high threshold in terms of market access, and the formal entry and exit mechanisms are very strict. In the approval of access, the examination and review of senior executives, businesses and institutions is carried out. In terms of on-site inspection methods, in traditional financial transactions, it takes a relatively long time to collect information, negotiate transactions, sign contracts and supervise the performance of contracts, resulting in large transaction costs. For the consideration of cost and income, a single transaction generally has a considerable amount of underlying capital, and banking institutions can realize economies of scale by using fine management. [
11]On-site inspection can effectively identify this micro-behavior and conduct a certain compliance review, and effectively track down similar large funds. In terms of off-site supervision methods, the regulatory authorities have established a data submission system with financial institutions, formulated a relatively complete statement and data system, standardized and unified the statements of traditional financial institutions and regulatory authorities, and established a strict data docking audit system. Through the use of off-site information system can be more convenient to realize the business information disclosure and risk warning, and this system is more and more transparent and advanced. For example, after the traditional 1104 reporting system, the CBRC has developed the EAST on-site inspection system based on bank business data in recent years, which is more closely connected with the internal system of the bank, and the authenticity of the obtained data is stronger. In terms of punishment, the regulatory authorities can adopt traditional mandatory measures such as fines, suspension of access, and restriction of dividend distribution.
2.3. Common Problems and Challenges of Traditional Financial Transaction Supervision
(1) Large and complex data
Every day, financial institutions process large amounts of transaction data from a wide range of sources and complex structures, including but not limited to customer information, transaction records, account activity, etc. With the globalization and digitization of financial business, this amount of data continues to increase. Processing and analyzing such a huge amount of data requires powerful computing power and advanced data processing techniques.
For example, a large bank processes millions of transactions every day, and this transaction data includes details such as transaction amount, time, location, counterparty, and so on. To monitor these transactions, banks need to store and process huge amounts of data and identify suspicious activity in a short period of time. This poses a huge challenge to existing [
12]IT infrastructure and data processing capabilities.
(2) High false alarm rate
Existing transaction monitoring systems often rely on preset rules and thresholds, which are set based on historical data and experience. However, the diversity and complexity of financial transactions make it challenging for these rules to cover all anomalies, resulting in many false positives. False alerts not only waste resources, but can also cause actual suspicious transactions to go unnoticed.
For example, in one month, a financial institution’s transaction monitoring system generated thousands of suspicious transaction alerts. However, after a manual review, it was found that less than 1% of these alerts were actually those that required further investigation. The other 99 percent are false alarms that cost a lot of manpower and time.
(3) The response speed and real-time performance of the monitoring system
In order to effectively prevent financial crimes, transaction monitoring systems need to have real-time analysis and response capabilities [
13]. However, traditional monitoring systems are often slow to respond, making it difficult to detect and block suspicious transactions in a timely manner. Real-time monitoring requires the system to be able to analyze and judge at the moment of transaction, which puts higher requirements on technology and algorithms.
For example, in a real-time transaction monitoring test, a bank’s system took an average of 10 minutes to assess and respond to the risk of each transaction. This means that during those 10 minutes, potentially suspicious transactions may have been completed, leaving room for criminals to operate.
(4) Cross-institutional and cross-border coordination issues
Financial crime often cuts across multiple institutions and countries, so transaction monitoring requires coordination and cooperation across institutions and borders. However, legal, regulatory requirements and technical standards vary across agencies and countries, making information sharing and collaboration more difficult. In addition, data privacy and security concerns have also become barriers to cross-border cooperation.
For example, in an international money laundering case, multiple banks and multiple countries are involved. Although each bank has its own surveillance system, the lack of effective cross-border cooperation and information sharing has allowed criminals to take advantage of regulatory differences in different countries to successfully launder money. In the end, Interpol intervened and coordinated with police and financial institutions in many countries to successfully crack the case.
In conclusion, the traditional financial transaction monitoring system is faced with large and complex data volume, high false alarm rate, monitoring system response speed and real-time problems, and cross-institutional and cross-border coordination problems. [
12]These challenges not only increase the operating costs and regulatory burden of financial institutions, but also make some suspicious transactions that actually exist may be overlooked. In order to solve these problems and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of financial transaction monitoring, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and behavior prediction technology has become a viable solution.