Mei Liu · Chief Operating Officer · China

What an operations chief from a rural bank would bring to a board

My contribution to a board

A board I join would get an operator's view of how a company actually reaches rural and older customers, and what goes wrong when it stops. I have spent twenty-eight years in bank operations: at a counter, in a branch operations department, building a national bank's centralised processing, running fraud control and collections at a consumer lender and now running operations for a merged rural bank with 5.1 million personal customers. I know where an operating plan presented to a board is likely to be thin: the busiest day rather than the average one, the second site rather than the first, the customer who cannot use the app, the control nobody is responsible for reversing.

I would also bring experience of consolidation from the inside. I have merged back offices twice and outlet networks once, and I have presented closure programmes and integration plans to a board with the dissenting memo attached. A board overseeing a consolidation usually sees the savings in detail and the service consequences in summary. I can help it ask for the figures that show the service consequences early.

I would not present myself as an accounting or financial expert for an audit committee, and I would not claim credit-risk expertise; my work sits beside credit, not inside it. My natural home is a committee responsible for customers or conduct, with membership of the risk committee. I would expect to serve a full year before chairing anything, so that I learn the company before I lead its discussion.

Judgement in practice

Sending the finance chief's objection to the board with my paper

When I proposed keeping twelve loss-making outlets and moving eleven to part-week hours, our chief financial officer disagreed in writing, arguing that the merger's financial case depended on the full saving. I could have summarised his view in a sentence. Instead I asked for his memo to go to the board in full, beside my paper, and I told the chairman before the meeting where I thought the memo was right: retained outlets do become harder to close. The board accepted the closure tests and added an annual review of every retained outlet, which was a better decision than either of us had proposed alone. As a director I would ask management to show me the strongest internal objection to a significant proposal, and I would treat an executive who volunteers it as a sign of a healthy management team.

Asking a committee to read a number that made the bank look worse

Our risk management committee received fraud reports that showed only what had been stopped. I proposed adding the number of accounts restricted by our own rules, how long they had been restricted and the misuse rate among those we released. Our head of anti-fraud worried that the committee would see the bank as careless with fraud. The first report did look worse: 23,600 restricted accounts and a median nineteen-day wait. Within a year, with the numbers in front of directors, we had retired fourteen overlapping rules and cut restricted accounts to 9,800. On a board I would look for the figure that shows what a control costs the people it is applied to, and I would support management when presenting it makes the report less comfortable.

Declining to approve a related-party loan file at the village bank

In 2025 the board of Lianfeng Village and Township Bank was asked to approve a loan to a company linked to one of its smaller shareholders. The credit paper was sound, but the related-party disclosure had been prepared after the terms were agreed and did not show how the pricing compared with similar loans. I asked for the item to be deferred one meeting so the comparison could be prepared, and I said in the minutes that I was a nominee of the principal shareholder and had no interest in the borrower. The loan was approved a month later at a slightly higher rate. As a non-executive I try to separate whether a decision is sound from whether it has been properly made, because a board is responsible for both.

My first year on a board

The first thing I would do is listen to customers before I listen to management. I would ask to visit two or three of the company's service points, outlets or call centres unannounced to the local team, on a busy day, and to read a sample of recent complaints in full rather than as a chart. That gives me a picture I can test the board papers against.

In the first quarter I would also meet the chair, the chair of each committee I join, the chief executive and the heads of operations, risk and internal audit separately. I would ask each of them the same question: what has this board not been shown that it should have been? The answers usually overlap, and where they do not I learn something about the company.

For the rest of the year I would attend every meeting of my committees and stay quiet about changes unless I saw a customer or control risk that could not wait. I would keep notes of questions I could not answer from the papers and bring them to the committee chair privately first.

At the end of the year I would ask the chair to tell me plainly whether my questions were useful and whether my banking background had narrowed my view of a different business. I would rather hear that early than discover it at the end of a term.

Conflicts and their management

My employment at Xuantang comes first, and any outside appointment would need the approval of our president and board under the bank's rules for senior managers holding outside positions. I would not join the board of any bank, rural credit institution, consumer lender, payment company or microcredit company in central China, nor of any company that borrows materially from, deposits materially with or supplies services to Xuantang. I would decline a company whose controlling shareholder is also a shareholder in Xuantang. I would disclose my village-bank seat, my Xuantang shareholding and any family links to borrowers I know of.

If a conflict arose during a term, I would tell the chair before the meeting, leave the discussion and ask for the minutes to record it. If such conflicts became frequent, I would resign rather than hold a seat in which I could not take part. I would keep everything I learn about Xuantang's customers and data out of another boardroom, even when it seemed directly relevant. The twenty-five days a year I can offer would be agreed in writing with my employer before I accepted, and would include preparation, committee work and time for an unexpected meeting.

My independence statement

I am a serving bank executive and a nominee director of a village bank sponsored by my employer, so I am independent of neither. For any other board I would set out my employment, my shareholding in Xuantang, my village-bank seat and any business between Xuantang and the company or its major shareholders, and I would expect the board to apply China's rules for independent directors of listed companies, together with any sector rules, before using the word independent about me. I would not join a company that banks with Xuantang in a material way.

Committee contribution

Chair and member readiness
Capacity	Committees
Ready to chair	Consumer rights protection committee, or a customer and conduct committee, after a full year as a member
Ready to join	Risk management committee · Consumer rights protection or customer committee · Audit committee, as a member with operations and controls experience rather than as its accounting expert

Capacity and preferences

Time available: 25 days per year
Current directorships: 1
Sectors: Life and health insurers with large county and rural customer bases · Listed companies in rural retail, agricultural inputs or farm supply chains · Public utilities and service companies that bill large numbers of older customers
Company type: A-share listed mid-cap company or large unlisted insurer with an established independent-director system and a board committee responsible for customers
Company stage: A company extending into rural markets or consolidating an operation, where service to older and rural customers needs board attention

The seat I am pursuing

I am looking for one independent directorship at a company outside banking whose customers are rural, older or new to formal financial services, ideally an A-share listed mid-cap company or a large unlisted insurer with a board committee responsible for customers. Life and health insurers selling in the counties, companies in rural retail or farm supply chains and utilities that serve many older customers are the settings where my experience would transfer most directly. I would like to join the risk committee and the customer or consumer protection committee and, after a full year, to chair the latter if the board wished. I am not interested in a seat offered for my bank's name, and I would decline a board that wanted a banker without a committee role. Before going further I would want to hear the chair's view of what the board lacks, how the company measures service to its oldest customers and whether management already reports the cost of its controls.

Board and committee exposure

Served as a director

Lianfeng Village and Township Bank

Board of directors; member of the risk management and related-party transactions committee

June 2024–present

Non-executive director nominated by Xuantang, the village bank's principal sponsoring shareholder; the bank holds RMB 3.8bn of assets. I am not independent of it and do not describe myself as such.

Presented to the Board or a committee

Xuantang Rural Commercial Bank

Board risk management committee

2024–present

Presents quarterly reports on operational risk, fraud losses, restricted-account release times and the annual processing failover test.

Presented to the Board or a committee

Xuantang Rural Commercial Bank

Board consumer rights protection committee

2024–present

Presents twice a year on complaints, service for older customers, outlet closures and the quarterly sample of released restricted accounts.

Presented to the Board or a committee

Xuantang Rural Commercial Bank

Full board

2023–2024

Presented the operations integration plan and the outlet network plan with its three closure tests, alongside the chief financial officer's dissenting memo.

Reported to a committee

Ruiqiao Consumer Finance Company

Board audit committee

2016–2018

Reported quarterly on application fraud losses, outsourced collections and complaints, and on the move of collections in-house.

Governance learning and readiness

IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered

The IICA Independent Directors' Databank is an Indian register for independent directors of Indian companies, and it does not apply to the Chinese appointments I would consider. I am not registered, and India is not a market where I am looking for a seat. In China, an independent director of a listed company is assessed against the securities regulator's rules on independence, qualifications and the number of listed boards one person may serve.

Listed-company independent director training course, completed in 2025
Director induction for village and township bank boards run by Xuantang's governance office, 2024
Expected credit loss accounting for non-finance directors, a two-day short course, 2025
Annual briefings from Xuantang's board secretary on related-party transaction rules and committee practice