Another piece of great news has come in for the development of Shanghai Fintech Center!

The 2nd Shanghai International Fintech Forum & 1st Shanghai Fintech Innovation Expo & Global Fintech Festival, hosted by the Shanghai Fintech Industrial Alliance (SFIA), took place in Shanghai from December 7 to 9, with the participation of several members of SFIA.

At the main forum themed "Opening-up and Innovation, Prudence and Regulation" on the morning of December 7, SIG and Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. signed a strategic agreement.

SIG Asset Management Co., Ltd. (SIGAM), the Huangpu District People's Government, Jiashan State-owned Assets Investment Co., Ltd., Hengdian Group Holdings Limited, Shanghai Zhengyan Information Technology Co., Ltd. and GP Capital Co., Ltd. signed an agreement for investment cooperation in the proposed Shanghai Fintech Industry Fund.

SFIA and the Singapore Fintech Association signed a cooperative agreement.

Among the leaders and guests present were Chen Mingbo, Deputy Secretary General of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government; Tu Guangshao, Member of the CPPCC National Committee and Executive Council Member of the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance (SAIF), Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Chai Hongfeng, Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), Chairman and Director of the National Engineering Laboratory of Electronic Commerce and Electronic Payment; Liu Xingya, Deputy Director of the People's Bank of China (PBC) Shanghai Head Office; Yu Beihua, Secretary of the CPC SIG Committee and Chairman of the Board of Directors; Liu Xinyi, Vice Secretary of the CPC SIG Committee, President of SIG and Chairman of SFIA; Chairman He Qing and President Wang Song of Guotai Junan Securities Co., Ltd.; Ge Ping, Deputy Director General of the Shanghai Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau; Zhang Wei, Deputy Head of Hongkou District; Tu Xiaojun, Executive Vice President of China UnionPay; and Zhang Wenlin, Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of Huawei. Liu Duo, President of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology; Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS); and Hsiao-Wuen Hon, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft attended the forum via videos.

Chen Mingbo, Deputy Secretary General of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government, addressed the main forum. He said, "Since the beginning of this year, fintech has become a key link in the integrated development of the international financial center and the technology innovation center with the advancement of the building of Shanghai into an international financial center and a globally influential technology innovation center. The fast development and integration of Shanghai's fintech industry has created favorable conditions for the building of Shanghai Fintech Center. Shanghai has established an integral financial market system including shares, bonds, futures, insurance, trust and other elements, brought together a host of outstanding leading fintech enterprises, and created a number of characteristic technology innovation parks such as Zhanjiang, Lin-gang and Zizhu. Based on the requirements of accelerating the building of "five centers", enhancing "four functions" and fulfilling "three tasks", Shanghai is pressing ahead with core fintech R&D. On the one hand, Shanghai will promote the integration of finance and technology; on the other hand, it will lay equal emphasis on innovation and security, and hold fast to the bottom line of financial security.

Liu Xingya, Deputy Director of the PBC Shanghai Head Office, delivered an address. He said, "The PBC Shanghai Head Office will leverage the leading, protective and incubating role of innovation regulation tools under an inclusive, prudential and elastic mechanism of fintech innovation trial and fault tolerance, to support financial institutions and technology companies in building quality products that meet market demand and conform to regulatory requirements. In the meantime, the PBC Head Office will support Shanghai in building infrastructure such as National Fintech Development Research Center and China Financial Market Trade Repository. Under the correct leadership of the PBC Head Office, the PBC Shanghai Head Office will assist the Shanghai Municipal People's Government in preparing for the establishment of National Fintech Development Research Center in Shanghai, and building China Financial Market Trade Repository, to open up a unique road of fintech development."

The Shanghai Municipal People's Government released the Implementation Plan for Accelerating Fintech Center Building in January 2020. According to the plan, Shanghai will release a series of measures such as fintech enterprise cultivation, tax preference and talent introduction to build a globally competitive fintech center in five years. The Shanghai Fintech Industrial Alliance (SFIA), initiated by SIG, was established on May 17, 2020. At the forum, SFIA unveiled some outcomes of fintech development.

Liu Xinyi, President of SIG and Chairman of SFIA, said in his address, "Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the country has put innovation in the core position of overall development, vigorously implemented the strategy of innovation-driven development, and created a new prospect for economic and social development in the new era. With a high level of two-way opening of the capital market, and the capabilities of risk control and financial regulation compatible with the degree of financial opening, Shanghai in the forefront of China's financial opening to the outside world has created favorable environment for fintech development. In this context, tech-driven financial innovation is bringing about significant changes in the financial industry. SFIA has implemented the implementation plan for building Shanghai Fintech Center and other tasks, pooled efforts to build Shanghai Fintech Center, adhered to innovation guidance, pushed forward the establishment and operation of a fintech industry agglomeration zone in Shanghai, and created an industrial promotion platform to facilitate collaborative innovation among financial factor markets, licensed financial institutions, fintech enterprises and universities' research institutes, to bring Shanghai's fintech industry into a new stage of high-quality development."

Facing problems such as core technology research and development, the trend of mixed operation, information infrastructure construction, data security and privacy protection, how the financial industry uses advanced technologies to improve fintech level and strengthen financial support to better serve the real economy is an important topic in the building of Shanghai Fintech Center, as well as a major concern of government regulators, Liu said. Since its establishment, under the guidance of the PBC Shanghai Head Office and the Shanghai Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau, SFIA has served pilot fintech innovation regulation, joined the working group on pilot fintech innovation regulation, encouraged its member entities and other subjects to declare pilot regulation projects, and assisted regulators in the collection, publicity and expert argumentation of the first batch of pilot projects, thus becoming a bridge between the open innovation of industrial institutions and the prudential regulation of regulators.

Tu Guangshao, Member of the CPPCC National Committee and Executive Council Member of SAIF, delivered a keynote speech. He offered advice on how to conduct effective regulation in fintech development to prevent the transfer of financial risks, suggesting clarifying the identification standards and specific forms of fintech companies, renovating the regulatory indexes of fintech companies to improve regulatory effectiveness, strengthening the protection of financial consumers and investors, risk warning and revelation; improving antitrust regulation in the fintech industry and optimizing market environment, establishing a fintech industry emergency management mechanism and coordinating joint supervision, and guiding the making of global fintech rules and leading industrial governance.

Chai Hongfeng, Member of CAE, delivered a keynote speech. He noted that the height of technology determines the height of the economy and the height of the economy determines the height of finance. Most of the new R&D institutions involved in the current round of construction are technology strengths that have integrated existing academic and R&D resources, continued to deepen institutional reforms and increased investment in joint R&D, expanded from small scientific laboratories to large ones and deployed for the future. In terms of industrial cluster creation, the fintech industry has initially accumulated rich academic experience and developed a large industrial scale, but remains at a startup stage of industrial collaboration.

Referring to the digital transformation of the financial industry in the post-pandemic period, Hsiao-Wuen Hon, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft, said the Covid-19 outbreak has made a huge impact on the development pattern and operation logic of all industries in the world, making it more urgent for the financial industry to realize digital transformation. Digital transformation will keep finance and technology closer and make more fintech companies stand out.

In recent years, global developed economies have developed fintech on a large scale. Fintech is becoming a focus of new-round competition among international financial centers. Finance-technology integration will be an irresistible trend in the future, accelerating fintech center building is necessary for new-round competition among international financial centers, and Shanghai enjoys prominent advantage in fintech development.

Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer of MAS, delivered a video speech. In recent years, Shanghai and Singapore have deepened fintech cooperation at the levels of talent, fintech enterprise and industrial association. In the future, the two sides can leverage regulatory sandboxes to help fintech companies in both countries support crossover cooperation in fintech, the implementation of fintech projects and the industrialization of fintech while maintaining the integrity of the financial system.

SFIA will further fulfill tasks including the implementation plan for building Shanghai Fintech Center, give play to its role in industrial ecology building, promote the longstanding, all-round, in-depth and sustained cooperation between its member entities to accomplish resource sharing, advantage complementation and collaborative innovation, push forward the building of Shanghai International Financial Center into a stage of high-quality development, and continue to improve the level of building.

Remarkably, at the invitation of MAS, upon recommendation by the Shanghai Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau, SFIA will participate in Global Fintech Festival 2020 Shanghai on behalf of Shanghai by connecting some contents of the forum and exposition to Singapore's "SFF × SWITCH" online platform through live text & image and video recording, to present this event to all the participating countries. As the world's largest fintech festival and an international fintech platform, Global Fintech Festival (2020) Shanghai brings together global fintech leaders, including academics, financial experts, policy makers and investors, to discuss new technologies, demonstrate innovation solutions and explore cooperation opportunities.