In late 2015, investors in one of China’s largest peer-to-peer lending companies, Ezubao, found themselves unable to retrieve their deposits. By September the next year, 26 Ezubao employees had been sentenced for effectively running a Ponzi scheme and failing to repay as much as Rmb38bn ($5.5bn) to investors.
It was one of the biggest and most brazen cases where a Chinese peer-to-peer lending company turned out to be fraudulent, but by no means the only one.
Almost three years later, Chinese regulators are still struggling to catch up with the workings of the runaway industry. The country’s policymakers face a particular challenge: how to rein in financial risks without causing panic among peer-to-peer investors and potential social unrest.