The construction of a global asset management center is an important part of the 14th Five-Year Plan for the construction of Shanghai International Financial Center. At present, Shanghai has basically built an international financial center that is compatible with China's economic strength and the international status of the renminbi, and has become an important bearer and source of innovation for various financial markets, financial institutions, financial products and financial infrastructure, laying a solid foundation for the construction of a global asset management center.
In the context of Shanghai's accelerated progress towards a global asset management center, on October 13, CBN and Bank of China jointly hosted the "2021 Shanghai Global Asset Management Summit Forum", where a number of domestic and foreign professionals from regulatory authorities, industry associations, banks, securities companies, trusts and other institutions conducted in-depth discussions on the new opportunities and trends in the development of the asset management industry.
On the same day, two blockbuster reports, "Practice and Innovation - Research on the Construction of Shanghai Global Asset Management Center" and "Guidelines for Overseas Asset Management Institutions to Invest in Shanghai (2021 Edition)", were also officially released at the forum.
Wu Qing, member of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and vice mayor of Shanghai, said in his opening speech that in 2025, Shanghai's position as a RMB asset allocation and risk management center should be more consolidated, and the system of the global asset management center will be more mature, which will better meet the requirements of asset allocation and risk management of domestic and foreign investors.
The development of the asset management industry welcomes new opportunities
At present, the global economic and financial landscape is undergoing profound changes, and in this context, the asset management industry will also usher in new changes and opportunities.
Li Yang, member of the Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and chairman of the National Finance and Development Laboratory, said at the forum that for China, the biggest opportunity is economic transformation, "new development stage, new development concept, new development pattern" constitutes the main content of high-quality economic development, and now it is in the initial stage of "three new" development, which will have a major impact on China's economic structure, and will also bring good assets to the asset management industry to break the "asset shortage" problem.
In Li Yang's view, there are four major areas worth paying attention to, namely ESG investment, pension industry, rural revitalization and special assets. Among them, in terms of pension finance, he believes that the aging problem will be the biggest challenge in the future, for insurance institutions, public funds, bank wealth management and other asset management institutions, the future can build a new platform for pension finance services, innovate new models of pension financial services, create a new ecology of pension financial services, and empower the industry with digital business concepts.
Liu Jin, President of bank of China, shared the multiple opportunities facing the asset management industry from the perspective of financial institutions. He said that the reshaping of the global economic structure and the deepening reform of China's financial reform have provided a good opportunity and favorable environment for the construction of Shanghai asset management center, and the continuous growth of asset management business demand and financial technology development have provided a broad market space and technical support for the construction of asset management center. The goal of common prosperity provides a new direction for the construction of asset management centers, and also puts forward new and higher requirements for the asset management industry, while creating more development opportunities.
Liu Jin said that financial institutions must seize the opportunity to achieve their own healthy development in the process of actively helping the construction of Shanghai's global asset management center. The first is to actively embrace change, accelerate product innovation, and serve the high-quality development of the real economy. The second is to accelerate digital transformation, strengthen scientific and technological empowerment, and build the core competitiveness of the asset management industry. The third is to promote the construction of the industry ecology and help improve the financial infrastructure.
Liu Di, deputy general manager of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, also mentioned that in the context of opening up, the development of the domestic asset management industry will usher in four opportunities, namely, the entry of foreign capital will have an overall improvement in the provision of services and products in the domestic asset management industry; the domestic asset management industry will accelerate the international layout; with the acceleration of opening up, passive investment, especially ETF investment, will become a very important tool in the global asset allocation; in the context of opening up, Shanghai will become a new round of global asset management institutions gathering place.
Liu Di also said that the future development of the fund market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange has three main directions, one is to continue to promote product innovation and create a more complete fund product chain; the second is to continue to strengthen market cultivation; the third is to make the ETF mechanism more effective and more convenient.
Under the new ecosystem, all kinds of asset management institutions compete for development
The development of the asset management industry has entered a new stage, how should various asset management institutions respond? At the forum, people from the Banking Association, the Insurance Asset Management Association, the Asset Management Association and the Trust Industry Association expressed their views.
Liu Feng, deputy secretary of the party committee and secretary general of the China Banking Association, said that in the era of large asset management, various asset management institutions have shown a development trend of a hundred flowers, and have also shown relatively clear advantages and disadvantages. For example, bank wealth management has obvious advantages in terms of funds, assets, customers, channel-end fixed income investment research, management risks, etc., but investment research capabilities, investment targets, and investment strategies need to be improved.
Securities management has obvious advantages in investment research capabilities and business coordination, but the product homogeneity is serious, the degree of external dependence is high, and the public fund has obvious advantages in incentive mechanism and active management, but there are also problems of consignment sales and high dependence; trusts have obvious advantages in investment fields and sales varieties, but the investment threshold is high, and the audience and customer groups are small.
Therefore, while pursuing differentiated development, all asset management institutions should uphold the concept of competitive development and make full use of the power of the circle of friends of asset management to continuously enrich and improve the product system, form and strategy. Continuously improve customer acquisition capabilities with product innovation and relative benefits, and achieve sustainable and high-quality development. Liu Feng said.
He Zhujun, member of the party committee and vice president of the China Insurance Asset Management Association, said that the current balance of insurance funds utilized is nearly 23 trillion yuan, maintaining a rapid development momentum as a whole; and insurance asset management institutions have begun to try to participate in the construction of a sustainable green global financial system.
Among them, in terms of ESG development, insurance funds on the one hand directly participate in the construction of green project investment in the fields of energy, environmental protection, water affairs, housing and other fields through bond investment plans, equity investment plans, private equity funds, industrial funds, trusts, etc.; on the other hand, actively participate in green financial construction through indirect investment methods, especially investment in financial products such as green bonds.
Huang Liping, member of the Party Committee and deputy secretary-general of the Asset Management Association of China, said that with the rapid growth of the wealth of Chinese residents and the rapid development of long-term professional management of long-term funds such as pensions, asset management institutions, including public and private funds, should take the initiative to actively develop cross-market business, improve risk management capabilities, and provide more abundant investment management services for all types of investors.
Cai Wei, chief economist of the China Trust Industry Association, also pointed out that in the future, China's asset management will mainly follow the trust mechanism, and trust companies should continue to actively promote business transformation to meet the needs of high-quality development of the real economy and resident wealth management. In his view, in the future, the proportion of financing trust business of trust companies will continue to decline, and the proportion of non-financing trust business will continue to rise, when the proportion of non-financing trust business exceeds the proportion of financing trust business, trust companies will usher in the third qualitative change, and basically realize the positioning and long-term development of trustees.
Pension finance has attracted much attention
With the increasing prominence of the aging population, the issue of old-age care will be a major challenge in the future. The 14th Five-Year Plan for the construction of Shanghai International Financial Center also proposes to strengthen financial services for the pension and health industries. In this context, the consensus in the industry is that pension finance is another blue ocean in the asset management industry. At present, many institutions, including banks, insurance, funds and other institutions, are actively laying out this field.
Tian Jun, general manager of the pension finance department of the Bank of China, said that in recent years, the Bank of China has actively laid out in the fields of pension finance, pension personal finance and pension industry finance, and formulated the "14th Five-Year Plan" pension financial plan; at the same time, combined with the construction of the silver hair scene, to create a financial and non-financial pension service system. In his view, there are two development trends in the future construction of the third pillar, one is the personal pension system supported by the tax deferral policy, and the other is the commercial pension financial products and services that operate in a market-oriented manner.
Li Wen, chairman of Hui Tianfu Fund Management Co., Ltd., said that the awakening of the people's awareness of financial management has brought major needs to the development of China's pensions. Since 2018, the public fund has launched a pension target fund, and has launched 120 products, 2.6 million people participating, and a scale of 80 billion yuan, indicating that the demand for pension has been paid attention to by many people, especially many young people. In the future, public funds should further enrich their product capabilities, especially the FOF products of pensions.
Wei Lin, general manager of Pacific Insurance Pension Industry Investment Management Company, mentioned that in recent years, insurance asset management institutions are actively exploring solutions of "pension finance + pension services". For example, taking out a part of the funds to open up the asset and liability side, investing in high-quality pension communities, on the one hand, to meet the needs of the current aging, and at the same time conducive to the organic combination of "insurance products + pension services".
"Financial institutions mainly provide assets and funds, but they cannot solve the resource problem of old-age services, so the state proposes a pension service system that combines health care, and pension financial institutions will make great achievements in this area, especially insurance institutions." Wei Lin said.
Zhu Haiyang, deputy general manager of Tianhong Fund, said that the core solution point of pension finance lies in the combination of anti-humanity of long-term investment and the smooth humanity of customer experience. He believes that the third pillar is long-term funding in the true sense of the word, and the current Internet environment helps to play the characteristics of long-term funds, that is, to allow investment managers to go directly to the client. He also mentioned that there are two major focuses on the third pillar of development, namely, adhering to the account system and diversifying asset allocation.
In addition to pension finance, in this forum, asset management institutions from home and abroad also cut into a number of vertical fields, focusing on the trend of family wealth allocation in China, how to grasp the opportunity of asset allocation in the new stage, the new trend of wealth inheritance ecology and family trust asset allocation, the development of asset management technology to empower the industry, and the new path of wealth management upgrading, etc., and deeply analyzed the new dynamics of the industry. It is foreseeable that as we enter a new stage, the asset management industry will further play an active role in asset management and provide effective support for building a new development pattern.