Government officials, experts, scholars, and enterprise representatives gathered at the Macao-Zhuhai Industrial Exchange Conference on Oct 29 to pool their wisdom on how to propel the smart financing industry in Hengqin New Area.

Hengqin Financial Investment Inno Valley HQ Incubator Management signed a cooperation agreement with the Macao Venture Capital Association to assist Zhuhai and Macao small and medium sci-tech enterprises in financing, and with Guangzhou Scientific & Technological Finance Group to jointly build a Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Scientific & Technological Finance Services Platform.

The event was held at Macao-Hengqin Youth Entrepreneurship Valley (Inno Valley HQ) on the occasion of the anniversary of the Hengqin Smart Financing Industrial Park.

Phase I of the park was put into operation in Inno Valley HQ on Oct 17, 2018. The second phase will occupy 10,000 sq m (2.5 acres) in the Hengqin International Commercial Center (ICC) as an emerging fin-tech cluster fueled by new-generation information technology.

Macao-Hengqin Youth Entrepreneurship Valley [Photo by Li Jianshu / Zhuhai Daily]

As of late October, the industrial park had welcomed 18 quality financial companies and institutions such as GF Securities, Ants Capital, GTech AI (Zhuhai), and the Hengqin Wisdom Finance Institute.

Fintech is a technology-driven financial innovation. Hengqin will continue to pay attention to development opportunities in cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and block chain, according to Chi Tenghui, director of the Financial Service Bureau of the Hengqin New Area Administrative Committee.

In the past ten years, Hengqin grew from having only one rural credit cooperative branch to the establishment of a multi-level financial service organization system, which integrates 20 kinds of subdivided financial enterprises, traditional financial institutions, and emerging financial formats. 

To date, the area is home to more than 6,500 financial companies, and the asset management scale of securities, funds, and other institutions approved by the China Securities Regulatory Commission is up to 2.4 trillion yuan ($340 billion).

Meanwhile, Macao and Zhuhai have established a normalized mechanism for financial cooperation and have made breakthroughs in connectivity and cross-border financial services.

Next, Hengqin will help land key financial cooperation projects and accelerate construction of the Guangdong-Macao Cross-Border Financial Cooperation (Zhuhai) Demonstration Zone, according to Kang Hong, deputy director of the administrative committee.