(Yicai Global) July 4 -- Baihang Credit, China's first licensed personal credit agency, has recently appointed a former deputy director of China’s central bank as its new chairman.

Wang Xiaolei will replace Zhu Huanqi, a former deputy director at the monetary policy department of the People’s Bank of China, as the new chairman, the second since Baihang Credit’s establishment, information on the website of the firm showed.

Wang became deputy director of the credit center of the PBOC in December 2009. Before that, she worked at the executive director’s office of the PBOC to the International Monetary Fund and at the Monetary Policy Department and the Credit Management Bureau of the PBOC.

Baihang Credit was founded in May 2018 by the National Internet Finance Association of China and eight market institutions, including Alibaba-backed Zhima Credit and Tencent Credit, becoming China’s first credit agency to have both personal and corporate credit business qualifications.

Information from data platform Qichacha showed that Baihang Credit also appointed four new directors to replace three directors who stepped down from their position on June 29. President Zheng Xianbing will take over as the new general manager of the company, a position that was previously held by Zhu.

As of May 22, Baihang Credit’s volume of personal credit reports exceeded 690 million this year, up 113 percent from a year earlier, according to data the company gave Yicai Global. Its amount of personal value-added credit products rose 556 percent to 2.6 billion, while that of corporate credit products exceeded 140 million. Baihang Credit’s number of cumulative products exceeded 3.4 billion, up 376 percent in the period.

The Regulation on the Administration of Credit Business, which came into effect in early January, stipulates that financial institutions are not allowed to conduct business to obtain credit services with market institutions that do not have legal credit business qualifications. This is a favorable policy for licensed credit agencies such as Baihang Credit to usher in a critical period of business development and performance improvement.

Editor: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione