NewPICC’s president Wang Yincheng under investigation by China’s discipline commission

Wang Yincheng, president of The People’s Insurance Co (Group) of China, is under investigation for possible corruption, making him the highest-ranking cadre in the insurance industry to take the fall in the government’s latest crackdown on financial malfeasance.

Wang, 57, holds the rank of a deputy minister in China’s bureaucracy by virtue of his seniority as deputy commissar, or Communist Party secretary, of state-owned People’s Insurance. He also sits on PICC Property’s board.

Investigations into Wang indicates China’s tightening noose on the financial industry, in the government’s coordinated crackdowns to impose discipline in Asia’s largest capital market. Insurers, stockbrokers and financiers have been placed under scrutiny for their roles in allowing capital raised from insurance policies to be used for funding takeovers and outsize acquisitions.

“The financial industry has been one of the major sectors targeted by the anti-graft watchdog,” said Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, noting that healthy growth of the financial sector plays a key role in serving the real economy. “What’s more, a more transparent and open market can help trim the space for corruption and rent-seeking.”

People’s Insurance had lax oversight of executives’ overseas travels, reckless investment decisions, transfer of benefits and nepotism at its subsidiaries, anti-graft inspectors noted in February 2016. It wasn’t clear if Wang’s investigations were related to these issues.