This aerial panoramic photo taken on Jan. 10, 2023 shows a view of Lujiazui area in the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone in east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Fang Zhe)
BEIJING, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- China's financial opening up, which is proactive, prudent and for mutual benefit, is an important driving force for the sector's reform and development, an official said on Wednesday.
The country has rolled out over 50 measures to expand financial opening up, including scrapping foreign ownership caps in the banking and insurance sectors, and slashing access thresholds for foreign investors, said Li Yunze, head of the National Financial Regulatory Administration.
At present, 30 global systemically important banks all have branches in China, and nearly half of the 40 largest insurance companies in the world have entered the Chinese market, Li highlighted when delivering a speech at the Annual Conference of Financial Street Forum 2023.
In the past three years, branches of foreign financial institutions in China saw robust growth in assets and profits, while the country's banking, insurance and asset management sectors also achieved good performances, said Li.
The average annual growth rate of banking credit scale in China registered 11.2 percent in the period, 5 percentage points higher than the average level of developed countries, he said.
Meanwhile, the average annual growth rate of China's premium income was 4 percentage points higher than the global average, said Li, noting that there is still much room for improvement, as the per capita premium was only 70 percent of the global average.
China is now the second largest asset and wealth management market in the world, with the number of individual investors surpassing 100 million, a three-fold increase compared with the end of 2019, Li said.
With the continuous improvement of residents' income, the sector will enter a "golden period" of development in China, he said.
Li noted that China will fine-tune the management model, based on pre-establishment national treatment and negative list, at a faster speed and further expand the market access for foreign institutions.
Efforts will be made to make China's financial system and policies more transparent, stable and predictable, creating an institutional environment conducive to prudent operation and fair competition, said Li.
China's financial opening up will never stop, and its determination to share development opportunities with the rest of world will never change, he said.
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