A top Chinese fintech expert has outlined China’s ambitions for leadership of the international sector in future.
Bi Shenglin (贲圣林), head of Zhejiang University’s Internet Finance Research Institute and International Business School, said that the comparatively laggard state of the finance sectors of developing economies provides outstanding opportunities for fintech upstarts to provide basic financial services.
China is a prime example of this, with Ant Financial achieving immense success domestically by catering to a traditionally underserviced client base.
While China is currently host to a considerable number of large-scale banks, brokerages and insurers, they continue to lag behind leading international standards in terms of digitisation, technological adoption, marketisation, internationalisation and standardised corporate governance.
Bi made the remarks during a lecture on “Global Trends in New Financial Development and China’s Opportunities” (新金融发展的全球趋势与中国机遇) delivered at the Big Data Era Fintech and Financial Innovation Forum (大数据时代金融科技与金融创新’讨论会) held in Guilin last week.
Bi said that China hopes to lead the development of fintech in future, highlighting the outstanding growth opportunities for the sector provided by emerging economies with underdeveloped finance systems.
Belt and Road nations provide “excellent soil” for the development of digital finance and fintech companies, including Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bengal, given their large populations and underdeveloped financial sectors.
The African market of more than 50 nations with a combined population of several billion also provides a huge market for financial inclusion, while China should seek cooperative partners in Central and Eastern Europe, where digital finance has seen strong growth over the past several years.
