Financial services can transform Yangtze region

Unified regulation

The city can also initiate the push for top-level design of unified financial regulation of the area, by leveraging the role of the Shanghai Head Office of the People's Bank of China, the central bank, in coordinating financial regulatory work of different authorities within the region.

A great deal of regulatory coordination is needed to give full play to the role of finance in promoting economic development. For example, regulatory coordination can help in the establishment of integrated financial infrastructure like databases.

It is essential to build a financial information database with unified standards across the region, using big data, cloud computing, blockchain and other financial technologies.

The information to be collected should cover financial assets, income, consumption and investment behavior, risk level, and other variables of households and corporates.

As such information entails requirements of high privacy and confidentiality, and is widely spread across real-economy businesses, fintech, financial institutions, and regulators, it is necessary for the government and market entities to cooperate in data collection.

One key element of the infrastructure to be built could be a unified system for residents across the region to pay for public transportation, water, electricity and other public services, by connecting the payment and settlement systems of financial institutions, third-party payment platforms and related enterprises.

Li Feng, the lead writer, is a professor with the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance, which is part of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is also the deputy dean of the China Academy of Financial Research. Co-writer Hu Hao is a researcher with the CAFR.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.