On September 4, the 386th biweekly CF40 roundtable was held with support from Shanghai Finance Institute (SFI) and the New Finance Alliance (NFI) to review the research findings of China Intelligent Finance Development Report (2021).

The report is the third installment of the report series which was initiated in 2019 and led by Mr. Xiao Gang, CF40 non-resident senior fellow and former chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission. The project, published on an annual basis, aims to provide a comprehensive review and evaluation of the latest development and regulation of intelligent finance in China.

The seminar kicked off with two keynote speeches by Mr. Xiao Gang and Mr. Xu Xianchun (CF40 advisor and former deputy director of the National Bureau of Statistics) on “China Intelligent Finance Development Report (2021)” and “Research on Building and Evaluating China Intelligent Finance Development Index (2022)” respectively. Following the speeches were comments from Mr. Yang Kaisheng, CF40 advisor and former president of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and Mr. Qi Yuan, CF4O invited guest and Dean of the AI Innovation and Industry Research Institute of Fudan University.

The project team noted that the recent development of China’s intelligent finance is characterized by further standardized environment for development, increasingly mature technology, expanding coverage, and accelerating transformation. In addition, based on the 2021 China Intelligent Finance Development Index, compiled by a team led by Xu Xianchun, China’s intelligent finance shows the following features: regional development of intelligent finance is positively correlated with the region’s overall economic development; regional difference is smallest in terms of development environment and largest in terms of performance and progress, but in general the provincial disparity decreased compared with a year earlier.

Experts also pointed out four challenges facing the current development of intelligent finance: first, the development stage of intelligent finance needs to be assessed objectively; second, the related standard system needs to be improved; third, algorithm blackbox remains a major risk for the application of artificial intelligence; fourth, data security and privacy protection are important concerns.

As major economies are trying to seize the opportunities presented by intelligent finance, China should strive for a leading position in this field. To that end, experts put forward four policy suggestions: first, strengthen the legislative support for intelligent finance; second, step up related standardization processes; third, encourage major players of intelligent finance innovation to embrace the concept of “responsible finance”; fourth, promote algorithm governance; fifth, step up data security and privacy protection.

The event was moderated by CF40 secretary-general Wang Haiming.