Jack Ma’s Ant Group may be forced to restructure its business, possibly by spinning off its giant consumer loan business, as a result of new draft rules on microlending introduced this week by Chinese finance industry regulators, say Ant employees and shareholders. Those rules helped trigger the shocking last-minute suspension of Ant’s planned initial public offering.

The rules could affect the credit and loan functions of Ant’s Alipay platform, investors say. Any major changes to the business would have an enormous impact on Ant, as credit and loan services accounted for about 40% of its total revenue in the first half of this year, according to the company’s IPO filings.