“At present, most of the apparent problems in the financial business of platform enterprises have been rectified,” the PBOC said. “The work focus of the financial management department has shifted from pushing centralised rectification to normal supervision.”

The fine on Ant Group targets the “violations of laws and regulations of Ant Group and its subsidiaries in corporate governance, financial consumer protection, participation in business activities of banking and insurance institutions, payment and settlement business, fulfilment of anti-money-laundering obligations, and development of fund sales business in the past years”, according to the statement.

“Targeting the problems found in previous law enforcement inspections, the financial management department has recently imposed administrative penalties on Postal Savings Bank, Ping An Bank, PICC Property and Casualty and Tenpay,” the PBOC statement said.

Since November 2020, to strengthen supervision in accordance with the law and to prevent risks, the PBOC’s financial management department has supervised and guided Ant Group, Tencent Holdings and other large platform companies to comprehensively rectify breaches of financial laws and regulations.

“The fine should be the final chapter of the regulatory crackdown on Ant, which will remove uncertainties in the company and allow it to develop new business,” said Louis Tse Ming-kwong, managing director of Wealthy Securities in Hong Kong. “This will also pave the way for Ant to consider listing again.”

However, Tse said that Ant may no longer be able to command the same level of excitement for its share offering as it did in 2020, as the regulatory environment is much tighter now.

“As the company’s Alipay is so popular, the coming IPO of Ant will still be successful, but the valuation it can get will be different from before,” Tse said.

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China’s regulators called a halt to the debut of Ant shares on the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges less than 48 hours before the highly-anticipated start of trading on November 5, 2020.

Ant said at the time that the suspension came about after its executives met China’s top financial regulators, who had drafted a new set of rules on the booming microlending market in the world’s second-largest economy.

The rule change promised to curb profits for the country’s fintech giants and stem the flow of funds to small businesses, which could lead to “significant change” for Ant’s business environment and possibly result in the company not fulfilling its listing requirements or disclosure rules, according to Ant’s statement to the two bourses at the time.

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Just one month after the suspended IPO, PBOC deputy governor Pan Gongsheng in December 2020 instructed the fintech company to return to its origins in online payments, protect customers’ privacy in operating its personal credit-rating business and establish a financial holding company to manage its businesses.

Pan also said Ant had to rectify any irregularities in its insurance, wealth-management and credit businesses, as well as run its asset-backed securities business in accordance with regulations.

Since then, Ant has carried out a host of reforms. In December 2020, the company removed from its financial marketplace interest-bearing time-deposit products that mature in either three or five years, which are offered by several small regional banks.