On December 17, the 4th Shanghai International Fintech Forum was held in Lujiazui, Shanghai. Wu Qing, Member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee and Executive Vice Mayor of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government, delivered an address via video link. Leaders, experts and scholars from national financial authorities, financial factor markets, financial institutions, sci-tech enterprises, universities, as well as research institutes attended the conference online and offline under the theme of "New Journey, New Development, New Challenge: Fintech in the Digital Economy Era".

Wu Qing, Member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee and Executive Vice Mayor of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government, delivers an address via video link

    Hosted by the Shanghai Fintech Industry Alliance (SFIA) in association with Shanghai International Group (SIG), Bank of Communications (BOCOM) and Haitong Securities, co-hosted by HSBC Fintech, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), and Hulian Fintech, with special support from the Lujiazui Administration and academic support from Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance (SAIF), made up of a main forum and five parallel sessions, with focus on "digital finance", "talent construction", "new financial infrastructure", "advanced technologies", "intelligent elderly care" and other topics, the forum aims to fully implement the spirit of the 20th CPC National Congress, promote fitnech exchanges, pool efforts to implement major national and municipal strategies, and fully support Shanghai in building a globally influential fintech center.

    A series of major initiatives to promote the building of Shanghai Fintech Center was launched at the main forum, the first projects involved in the pilot practice of capital market fintech innovation in Shanghai organized by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) was released, Shanghai Fintech Talent Training Base was launched, the Declaration on Industrial Cooperation in Building Shanghai Fintech Talent Training Base was signed, the outstanding achievements in the building of Shanghai Fintech Center over the past three years were released, the online showroom of SFIA was launched, the White Paper on the Fintech Development of Shanghai (2021) was released, and the Intelligent Finance Professional Committee and Advanced Technology and Security Professional Committee of SFIA were established.

The first list of projects involved in the pilot practice of capital market fintech innovation in Shanghai is released

    The Shanghai Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau (SMFRB) and the CSRC Shanghai Office jointly released the first list of projects involved in the pilot practice of capital market fintech innovation in Shanghai. Coordinated and guided by CSRC, through project collection, review, professional assessment and publicity, 26 projects were selected into the first list of projects involved in the pilot practice of capital market fintech innovation in Shanghai. The declared projects were from financial factor markets, securities, futures, public funds, commercial banks, sci-tech enterprises and other entities, and most of them were jointly declared by several entities. These projects involve next-generation information technologies such as AI, big data, cloud computing and blockchain, and cover fields such as customer service, business management, investment research, registration and clearing, and risk regulation.

    According to the decisions and plans of CSRC, as well as the work arrangements of Shanghai, the pilot practice of capital market fintech innovation in Shanghai was launched at the 3rd Shanghai International Fitnech Forum last December. Shanghai established a working group on the pilot practice based on local facts, with SFIA organizing project collection and selection. Over the past year, relevant institutions in Shanghai's capital market have taken active part in the pilot practice, explored and developed new fields of innovative development of the capital market that are in line with the regulatory requirements. Now Shanghai ranks first in terms of the number of declared projects among the pilot cities. With serving the real economy, improving market efficiency, tightening compliance risk control and improving regulatory capacity as the application orientation, in the future pilot work, we will continue to explore a well-coordinated, scientific and effective fintech regulatory system and mechanism, build an inclusive and prudent fintech regulation environment, and create a sound ecosystem for the healthy development of fintech in the capital market.

Shanghai Fintech Talent Training Base is launched

   Shanghai Fintech Talent Training Base was launched. To thoroughly implement the spirit of the 20th CPC National Congress, promote the construction of a fintech talent highland in Shanghai, and create a top fintech talent cultivation and innovation platform, leaders of the Shanghai Municipal Financial Work Party Committee, the Shanghai Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau and the Shanghai Head Office of the People's Bank of China (PBC), leaders of universities such as Fudan University, Tongji University, East China Normal University, Shanghai University, China Europe International Business School and SAIF, and leaders of key members of SFIA; Yu Beihua, Secretary of the CPC SIG Committee and Chairman of the Board of Directors; Qian Bin, Member of the CPC Committee and Vice President of BOCOM; and Fu Fan, Vice Secretary of the CPC Committee and President of China Pacific Insurance Group (CPIC) announced the launch of Shanghai Fintech Talent Training Base.

    Under the general policy of "industry-academia combination, university-enterprise collaboration, industry-education integration, openness and innovation", and the principle of demand orientation, open cooperation and gradient training, the base will fully leverage the advantages of industrial organizations and industrial parks in ecological agglomeration, spatial location and other aspects, to create a fintech talent supply and demand platform, a joint talent training base and a standard certification center, improve the marketization, specialization and application levels of fintech talents, help build a fintech talent highland, and promote the upgrading of Shanghai Fintech Center.

    The base will operate under a "1+X" model - 1 public platform + several industrial bases. The "1" refers to a public platform, which will be operated by SFIA to provide various basic public services for all trainees and professionals; the "X" refers to several industrial bases, which will be constructed by all the partners to promote the cultivation of enterprises' own talents in a targeted manner by releasing recruitment plans, training courses and research projects.

The Declaration on Industrial Cooperation in Building Shanghai Fintech Talent Training Base is signed

    Afterwards, leaders from more than 20 institutions, including financial markets, banks, insurance companies, securities companies and fintech subsidiaries, signed the Declaration on Industrial Cooperation in Building Shanghai Fintech Talent Training Base. Based on the common cooperation basis, targets and expectations of talent discovery and cultivation, the partners reached consensus on promoting cooperation in talent base building based on respective situation, and will cooperate in the following four aspects: First, establishing a school-enterprise fintech laboratory: they will cooperate in research projects, conduct joint research on key industrial technologies, jointly promote the implementation of major strategies and the construction of functional projects, and train high-level versatile talents during research; second, training students, with focus on training fintech-related majors, they will bring forward the work of talent recruitment and management trainee selection to the stage of student internship and practice, so as to discover, cultivate and retain talents in advance; third, offering fintech lectures: they will give play to the platform role of SFIA, and invite business and technical experts of the partners to give advanced lectures on campus; fourth, improving the capabilities of staff in service: universities and SFIA will jointly develop training courses on fintech capacity improvement linked to the existing fintech certificates, to effectively promote the vocational education of the partners' staff in service.

    Among the first 26 industrial partners involved in the building of Shanghai Fintech Talent Training Base are 12 financial markets: Shanghai Stock Exchange, Shanghai Futures Exchange, China Financial Futures Exchange, China UnionPay, Shanghai Insurance Exchange, China Trust Registration Co., Ltd., CIPS Co., Ltd., City Commercial Banks Clearing, Shanghai Headquarters of China Central Depository & Clearing Co., Ltd., Shanghai Branch of China Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation Limited, Shanghai United Assets and Shanghai Equity Exchange; 9 financial institutions: BOCOM, Bank of Shanghai, Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank (SRCB), CPIC, Changjiang Pension Insurance, Guotai Junan Securities, Haitong Securities, Shenwan Hongyuan Securities and Orient Securities; and 5 fintech subsidiaries: Hulian Fintech, BOC Fintech, PICC Information Technology, Taiping Fintech and HSBC Fintech.

The outstanding achievements in the building of Shanghai Fintech Center over the past three years are released

    The leaders of SMFRB and PBC Shanghai Head Office jointly released the outstanding achievements in the building of Shanghai Fintech Center over the past three years. The call for the outstanding achievements in the building of Shanghai Fintech Center over the past three years, organized by SFIA, falls into three categories: "technology, application and ecology". Upon expert argumentation and publicity, 110 outstanding entries were shortlisted, including 57 application achievements, 31 technological achievements and 22 ecological achievements, which were declared by 12 financial factor markets and financial infrastructures, 10 commercial banks, 5 insurance companies, 10 securities and futures companies, 7 public funds and fund sales companies, and 17 fintech companies. The release was aimed to summarize and promote institutions' good practices and experience in the fintech field, review Shanghai's innovation practices over the past three years, demonstrate Shanghai's achievements in fintech development, and promote the high-quality development of Shanghai's fintech industry.

    The building of Shanghai Fintech Center is a major focus of promoting the integrated development of Shanghai International Financial Center and Shanghai Sci-tech Innovation Center. As the building of Shanghai Fintech Center started in 2019, Shanghai clearly proposed to build a globally competitive fintech center within five years. Now Shanghai has achieved fruitful results in fintech development. Various institutions in Shanghai have demonstrated their innovations in fintech, covering advanced areas such as privacy computing, AI, big data and distributed technology. Digital technologies represented by fintech have become new drivers for the financial industry, and financial digitalization is irresistible. Leading financial institutions have conducted explorations and practices in such aspects as promoting collaborative innovation, carrying out crossover cooperation, improving the people's livelihood and serving the real economy, strengthened the reciprocal sharing of generic fintech technologies, and promoted the industrialized and massive application of new technologies in the financial sector, thus constantly improving the industrial ecology of openness and innovation of fintech.

   To further promote the publicity and display of the outstanding achievements in the building of Shanghai Fintech Center over the past three years at all levels throughout the year, the online showroom of SFIA was launched concurrently. SFIA has conducted overall planning of the permanent showrooms in the Shanghai International Fintech Innovation Center and upgraded them, and will present the outstanding achievements over the past three years online in the form of panoramic view + VR + digital human, in an effort to create a 7×24h digital showroom, publicize the achievements of various institutions in fintech, highlight the remarkable role of fintech in promoting the digital transformation of the financial industry, and vividly display the achievements and splendor of exhibitors.

The White Paper on the Fintech Development of Shanghai (2021) is released

    At the main forum, Qian Bin, Co-Chair of SFIA and Li Feng, Vice President of SAIF jointly released the White Paper on the Fintech Development of Shanghai (2021). To give full play to the role of the think tank of SFIA and present a full picture of Shanghai's fintech industry, SFIA released the White Paper on the Fintech Development of Shanghai for the third consecutive year. The 2021 version continues the framework of the 2020 and 2019 versions, updates mass industrial data, compares key indicators, presents and analyzes the development trend of the fintech industry; it has a selection of nearly 100 fintech cases in various industries, and contains interviews with more than 60 institutions and enterprises through questionnaires, field surveys and telephone; it focuses on new technologies, products and scenarios emerging in Shanghai's fintech industry in 2021, and showcases the significant achievements of key institutions in fintech research and practices, to provide a reference for regulators, financial institutions, financial factor markets, fintech enterprises and academic researchers. Besides, the English version of selected contents was added to enhance its academic attention and international influence.

The Intelligent Finance Professional Committee of SFIA is established

The Advanced Technology and Security Professional Committee of SFIA is established

    To give play to the advantages and specialties of its members, facilitate research cooperation between institutions, and promote the development of the fintech industry, SFIA held the inaugural ceremony of two professional committees at the main forum. Initiated by Haitong Securities, CPIC and SRCB, vice chairmen of SFIA, the Intelligent Finance Professional Committee of SFIA was established at the main forum, aiming to strengthen the financial application of AI across industries, markets and institutions, accelerate the development of intelligent finance and promote the building of Shanghai International Fintech Center. CAICT, vice chairman of SFIA, initiated the Advanced Technology and Security Professional Committee in association with BOCOM, which will, based in Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta, coordinate national technical forces, first introduce advanced technologies to the financial industry, and conceive and set advanced standards, so as to create a fintech innovation ecosystem.

Huang Zhen, Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) and Vice Chairman of the CPPCC Shanghai Municipal Committee, delivers a keynote speech

Jiang Changjun, Member of CAE, delivers a keynote speech

Wei Chenyang, Associate Chair of the Institute for Fintech Research (IFR), Tsinghua University, delivers a keynote speech

    The main forum brought together a galaxy of experts and scholars. Huang Zhen, Member of CAE and Vice Chairman of the CPPCC Shanghai Municipal Committee; Jiang Changjun, Member of CAE, Chair Professor of Tongji University, Chairman of the Board of Supervisors of the China Association for Artificial Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the Shanghai Association for Science and Technology; and Wei Chenyang, Associate Chair of IFR, Tsinghua University and Director of the China Insurance and Pension Research Center, National Institute of Financial Research, delivered keynote speeches, offering insights into the fintech industry from the perspectives of technical trends, transaction risk control and green & sustainability, discussing the in-depth application of advanced technologies in the financial industry, and looking into the future of fintech development in the digital economy era.

    Following the main forum, five parallel sessions were held. Under the themes of "High-quality Development of Finance Empowered by Digital Transformation", "New Area, New Track: Construction of Fintech Talent Highland in the Digital Economy Era", "Building the Cornerstone of Financial Security, Promoting the Development of Fintech", "Fostering New Drivers of Financial Infrastructure, Creating a New Ecosystem of Fintech" and "Promoting Pension Insurance and Digital Innovation at All Levels", the sessions will discuss the new development and new challenges of fintech in the digital transformation of institutions from different perspectives and directions. A series of important releases and impressive topics are coming up.