At the 2026 Lujiazui Forum held today, Fu Fan, Chairman and Executive Director of China Pacific Insurance (Group) Co., Ltd. (CPIC), addressed the session on "Empowering High-Level Financial Opening-Up through Shanghai-Hong Kong Financial Synergy."
He emphasized that in the face of a complex and severe international landscape, China's insurance sector urgently needs to enhance its global service capabilities and improve mechanisms for risk protection and dispersion to safeguard China's overseas interests. This, he stated, represents a critical focal point for insurance collaboration between Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Fu Fan noted that as a leading domestic insurance group, CPIC should contribute its expertise and strength to integrate the institutional strengths of both Shanghai and Hong Kong, promote synergistic development, and inject fresh momentum into the nation's high-level financial openness. He shared several insights and explorations.
Key Areas for Synergistic Development
The first area is strengthening cross-border risk protection through Shanghai-Hong Kong collaboration. Chinese enterprises expanding overseas are exhibiting new trends, including more diversified market layouts and an industrial shift towards high-end, intelligent, and green development. Their operational models have also evolved from traditional project contracting to establishing overseas R&D, production, and regional headquarters. The insurance industries of Shanghai and Hong Kong can fully leverage their synergistic advantages to support these "going global" enterprises in addressing novel, complex, and localized risks.
This involves deepening the construction of overseas insurance service networks and capabilities. Using Hong Kong as a pivot and leveraging its talent pool and global insurance service experience can enhance the supply capacity of global insurance policies, meeting the comprehensive coverage needs of outbound enterprises for single policies covering multiple countries and scenarios. It also entails actively integrating with Hong Kong's professional service platforms for outbound enterprises, providing localized services such as regulatory compliance, market research, and partnership facilitation.
Another aspect is creating a complementary landscape of offshore reinsurance hubs and onshore centers. Building on China's vast direct insurance market and institutional innovations like the Lin-gang Special Area, Shanghai is accelerating the development of an onshore reinsurance center. Hong Kong, as an offshore reinsurance hub, boasts a mature reinsurance ecosystem, international-aligned regulatory frameworks, and extensive cross-border service experience. Promoting the integrated development of reinsurance in both locations is a key pathway for China's reinsurance market to transition from one-way to two-way opening, which will help foster independent risk pricing capabilities and enhance the risk resilience of Chinese enterprises in their global expansion.
Furthermore, there is a need to establish mechanisms for transferring and dispersing new types of risks. Chinese insurance institutions have already issued several bonds in Hong Kong. Shanghai is drawing on Hong Kong's experience, using institutional innovation to extend new risk transfer tools to areas like technological innovation and major infrastructure. In the future, leveraging Hong Kong's international investor network can further connect domestic and international risk dispersion channels, strengthening financial resilience and boosting China's voice in global risk management.
Enhancing Global Financial Resource Allocation
The second area is optimizing the allocation of global financial resources through enhanced connectivity. Hong Kong has consistently been the preferred choice for international capital allocating to China, with net fund inflows and assets under management for Hong Kong-registered funds seeing significant growth in 2025. Concurrently, domestic long-term interest rates continue to trend downward, pressing insurance funds to broaden their allocation boundaries and improve their grasp of diverse markets.
One approach is to explore global asset allocation for insurance capital by leveraging the institutional strengths of both markets. China's insurance fund utilization balance currently exceeds 39 trillion yuan, characterized by large scale, long cycles, and stable operation. Making long-term allocations to the Hong Kong market through channels like Stock Connect not only enables a diversified portfolio of global high-quality assets but also utilizes the long-term nature of these funds to hedge against short-term capital volatility, solidifying Hong Kong's foundation as a hub for global long-term capital.
Another approach involves innovating capital operation methods to enhance the international competitiveness of financial institutions. By introducing overseas strategic investors, domestic financial institutions can optimize their capital structures and learn from advanced practices in corporate governance, risk control, and market-oriented operations. It is believed that more domestic institutions will rely on the Hong Kong market to improve their capital replenishment mechanisms, solidify the foundation for international development, and strengthen their global core competitiveness.
Advancing Financial Technology Development
The third area is elevating the development capacity of financial technology through digital cooperation. Artificial intelligence is accelerating transformation in the financial sector. Both Shanghai and Hong Kong are actively promoting the application of digitalization and AI within financial institutions and improving digital financial governance systems, with potential breakthroughs expected in two directions.
The first is reasonably promoting cross-border data flow to strengthen the underlying support for cross-border finance. The "Memorandum of Understanding on Digital Cooperation in Shanghai-Hong Kong Freight Trade and Finance" signed in March this year applies blockchain technology to electronic bills of lading and trade finance, exploring the connection of shipping, trade, and financial data across borders. In April, Shanghai expanded the implementation scope of its data negative list, promoting cross-border data flow for reinsurance and international shipping. Through technological innovation coupled with institutional innovation, Shanghai and Hong Kong are building compliant, secure, and efficient cross-border data circulation pathways, reshaping the emerging foundation for cross-border finance.
The second is jointly promoting "AI+" initiatives to achieve organic integration in the breadth and depth of applications. Shanghai, leveraging its rich industrial scenarios, is advancing the large-scale application of AI technologies. Hong Kong, focusing on cutting-edge research and leveraging its strengths as an international financial hub, is concentrating on in-depth exploration of AI in areas like financial regulation and compliance risk control. Both regions should leverage their comparative advantages, deepen technical interoperability and scenario co-creation, and establish a benchmark for global fintech collaborative innovation.
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