Mortgage lending gets more flexible

China's commercial banks are gaining more room in pricing and risk valuation in mortgage lending, the country's top financial regulators said on Friday.

"Mortgage lending should be further encouraged, as it remains quite safe compared with corperate lending," said Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, at the conference held by the Institute of International Finance in conjunction with the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting.

Zhou said individual mortgage loans in China account only for between 10 percent and 20 percent of total banking loans, "much lower than in some countries, where the ratio is between 40 percent and 50 percent".