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

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

This transformation is driven by both urgent industry needs and clear policy guidance. On one hand, recent years have seen persistent outbreaks of financial consumer issues; AI technology has not only created new risks but also become a key tool for institutions to break through consumer protection challenges. On the other hand, the People’s Bank of China explicitly stated at the 2026 Technology Work Conference that it will “deepen industry-technology integration, actively and prudently promote the application of artificial intelligence in the financial sector, and unleash the momentum of digital and intelligent development.”

In January of this year, Southern Finance Media Group launched the “315 Financial Consumer Protection Outstanding 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 Strengthening Guides Consumer Protection

As AI penetrates various industries, new risks in finance intertwine with traditional issues, forcing technological methods to accelerate 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 points out that complaints about non-bank financial credit have increased significantly. With the rapid expansion of the consumer finance market and the increasing popularity of internet credit products, while meeting consumers’ capital turnover needs, a series of new problems have emerged.

“In recent years, complaints related to internet financial services have been rising rapidly, with related complaint volumes doubling year-on-year. Non-bank credit platforms are 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 of personal information or leaks, unregulated collection methods, and complaint channels that are 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 manual review and rule-based risk control, creating an imbalance in offense and defense. On the other hand, the past consumer protection approach was mainly reactive, with the pain point of “firefighting after incidents” and “preventing fires at the source” being neglected. It could only respond passively to complaints and disputes after they occurred, unable to identify risks or resolve hidden dangers in advance.

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 and imposed 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 promises 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 about new scams using AI technology.

AI Promotes a Shift to “Proactive” Financial Consumer Protection

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

Reviewing typical cases collected, the practices of Zhongan Consumer Finance, Ping An Bank Auto 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.

Zhongan Consumer Finance’s core breakthrough in consumer protection is the innovative integration of the traditional Chinese medicine concept of “preventive treatment” into the consumer protection system. They developed a self-designed “Zhilu Large Model” to create the “Consumer Protection Intelligent Agent,” the industry’s first full-process digital and intelligent consumer protection solution.

Before risks occur, Zhongan Consumer Finance uses AI to build customer insight systems and anti-fraud model matrices that enable real-time risk monitoring throughout the customer’s entire business cycle. Last year, they successfully blocked over 22,000 customers from telecom fraud. 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 for consumers are cumbersome mortgage and release procedures, multiple trips, and long processing times. Ping An Bank Auto 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. It digitizes the entire mortgage and release process that previously required multiple visits to financial institutions and vehicle management offices. The process that used to take 3-5 days can now be completed in as little as 15 minutes, replacing “people running around” with “data running,” solving the problem of consumers making multiple trips.

For securities firms, preventing illegal securities activities is a core battleground for consumer protection. Traditional investor education faces issues of “massive flooding” and “imprecise reach.” Wanlian Securities, centered on AI technology, has built a “precision drip-feed, full coverage” investor protection system tailored to individual needs.

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

Additionally, Wanlian Securities integrates investor education throughout the entire lifecycle, designing differentiated engagement plans for novice, active traders, and long-term holders, supporting them from investment initiation to rational investing with full digital accompaniment.

When AI agents can generate thousands of words of marketing copy in seconds, traditional compliance models relying on manual review and passive response are no longer sufficient to handle explosive content growth in the AI era. Yingmi Fund’s innovative approach 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 includes 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) technical framework, it can accurately identify issues such as expected return promises, implicit capital preservation hints, and prohibited extreme words, while providing actionable modification suggestions.

Yingmi Fund’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 offense.” 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” consumer protection—remains the industry’s fundamental guiding value.