Shanghai's innovative strategies boost the effectiveness of financial institutions

As Shanghai strives to become an international financial center, the local government and banks are introducing innovative policies and measures to support businesses.

Lujiazui Financial City

Lujiazui Financial City in Pudong New Area has over 8,000 financial institutions, including 80 percent of the country’s foreign asset management institutions, 40 percent of foreign legal entity banks, one-third of fund management companies, and one-fourth of insurance asset management institutions, making it an important gathering place for global asset management institutions in China.

A series of landmark financial industry expansion and opening-up achievements were made in Lujiazui, including JPMorgan Chase, the country’s first wholly foreign-owned securities company, the first batch of Sino-foreign joint venture bank wealth management companies like BlackRock Jianxin, and the first batch of wholly foreign-owned public fund management companies such as BlackRock, Neuberger Berman, Fidelity, and Schroeder.

Lujiazui aims to serve global financial institutions by enhancing institutional integration, fostering cooperation across platforms, and optimizing the business environment.

Green finance, as a new engine of economic transformation, plays a significant role in driving high-quality development. The Pilot Implementation Plan for Comprehensive Reform of Pudong New Area (2023-2027) stated that it should encourage the development of diverse green financial products while adhering to legal requirements and effectively preventing and controlling risks.

Pudong New Area has promulgated the “Several Provisions on the Development of Green Finance in Shanghai Pudong New Area” regulations to enhance green financial services, promote inclusive finance, and integrate science and technology innovation finance. This is the first time Shanghai and Pudong have used legislative flexibility in the financial industry.

The pilot implementation plan suggests using digital yuan for trade settlement, e-commerce payments, carbon trading, green power trading, and other applications. Since the pilot application of the digital yuan in Shanghai, Pudong has aggressively encouraged banks, third-party payment institutions, enterprises, and supermarkets to carry out the trial operation, resulting in the development of several domestic apps.

Standard Chartered

Standard Chartered has actively promoted cross-border and free trade business for small and medium-sized businesses in Shanghai. The bank offers diverse facility channels, convenient settlement techniques, and risk management tools for cross-border trade by small and medium-sized enterprises through new financial products and service models.

Meanwhile, it collaborates with governmental bodies and industry associations to create an ecosystem conducive to SME’s cross-border and free trade businesses, assisting them in seizing opportunities, expanding business, and increasing competitiveness in the global market, as well as realizing long-term international development.

Since the beginning of this year, Standard Chartered has actively promoted knowledge about the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone accounts to small and medium-sized corporate customers via its WeChat official account, an innovative manner to assist enterprises in understanding business development opportunities and foreign exchange trading in the free trade zone. Market price risks have risen in recent years as a result of exchange rate volatility, affecting the operating costs of small and medium-sized businesses significantly. This year, Standard Chartered dramatically reduced its margin ratio to give small and medium-sized businesses more efficient and easily accessible risk-neutral currency management solutions.

Standard Chartered’s SME Banking team has successfully connected with Lingang New Area’s “Go Global” Comprehensive Service Platform, the country’s first comprehensive service platform for companies looking to “go global.” Lingang Group operates the platform, which focuses on delivering one-stop public services for Chinese firms looking to invest and do business abroad. Standard Chartered, one of the institutions stationed on the platform, completed its first shift of the external service window in October and will continue to provide regular services to SMEs in Lingang area via the platform.

The bank will continue to empower enterprises to “go global” with Lingang Group and other industry organizations and professional service institutions, collaborate with various forces, cooperate with governmental bodies and industry associations, and jointly create a new financial ecosystem conducive to SME’s sustainable development.

Bank of China

The Bank of China Shanghai Branch has launched a batch of cross-border financial products and services such as foreign exchange settlement and sales, credit cards, and departure tax refunds to further optimize the bank card acceptance and cash use environment, provide mobile payment and account services and assist with cross-border exchanges in a bid to better serve the employees of foreign-funded enterprises.

The bank has been upgrading and enhancing its cross-border product regulatory system. Leveraging BOC’s advantages in cross-border custody, the Shanghai branch is improving its cross-border custody product system to encourage more foreign enterprises to invest and do business in China.

In recent years, the branch has given full play to the advantages of cross-border finance, actively supported the government to attract investment, helped overseas enterprises develop in China with high-quality financial services, promoted cooperation among Chinese and foreign enterprises, contributing to the construction of Shanghai International Financial Center and the country’s high-level opening-up.

As the sole strategic partner of the China International Import Expo, Bank of China aggressively promotes “exhibitors to investors” and works to increase the expo’s spillover impact. Since the first CIIE, the Shanghai branch has invited firms to participate as exhibitors for seven years in a row, looking for partners and sharing opportunities.

The branch has also prioritized integrity and innovation, continuously optimizing its products and services with practical measures to assist more foreign-invested enterprises in developing their businesses in Shanghai as the city strives to build a first-class business environment.

To date, the bank has provided financial services to more than 80 percent of the Fortune 500 companies, as well as over 70 percent of the MNC regional headquarters in Shanghai.