The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) will require banks to provide more detailed reports on loans provided to other financial institutions through the interbank market, two people close to the CBRC told Reuters.

The development comes after signs that little of China’s surprisingly strong credit growth in the first quarter seems to have found its way into the real economy.

Beijing is increasingly worried that opaque financing channels are being used to channel funds into speculative real estate – which saw a dramatic rise in investment in February – or to conceal past loans that have gone bad.

Effective May 5, the CBRC will require all domestic policy banks, state-owned banks and joint-stock banks to report their risk exposure from interbank loans made to other members of the financial industry, such as other banks, brokerages and investment funds, the sources said.

The CBRC did not respond to requests for comment on the new reporting requirements.

One of the people close to the CBRC said that in addition to itemising exposure to individual interbank borrowers, each bank must also comb through its data to identify its five largest borrowers.

The CBRC already requires banks to report their net exposure to loans made to other financial institutions, but now the lenders will have to give regulators far greater detail by identifying exposure on an institution-by-institution basis, the sources said.

This would help regulators to both measure systemic risk and to identify risk-management problems at individual institutions.

(Editing by Richard Borsuk)