Chinese Academy of Financial Inclusion at Renmin University of China
Chinese Academy of Financial Inclusion (CAFI) is an international professional research institute under the School of Finance at Renmin University of China. Guided by the concept of "Commitment, Action, Focus, and Impact", CAFI is committed to building a first-class think tank and platform for financial inclusion, facilitating the development of an inclusive financial system, and fulfilling the vision of "Good Finance and Good Society".
By pooling domestic and international resources, CAFI focuses on the development and progress of inclusive finance and conducts fundamental and forward-looking work in the fields of policy making, research consultation, exchange and cooperation, knowledge sharing, capacity building, and innovative practice so as to provide policy makers, researchers, and industry practitioners with theoretical support, decision-making analysis, market insights, and practical experience.
With Dr. Bei Duoguang as the president and Dr. Zhao Xijun as the co-president, CAFI takes pride in its outstanding team led by seasoned scholars and experts. The members of the board of directors and the advisory council are from regulatory agencies, leading industry agencies, and research institutions from home and abroad.
On the basis of my understanding of finance, my life can be viewed as a three-phase metamorphosis.
Before 1978, I knew next to nothing about finance, although I had read Mao Dun's masterpiece Midnight, a novel set in Shanghai circa 1930s featuring complex and tricky financial maneuvers.
After 1978, I became a student of finance, all the way from undergraduate to PhD. After stints as public servant at the Ministry of Finance and the China Securities Regulatory Commission, I jumped on the bandwagon of investment banking, a career shift highly desired then as now. Throughout this phase, I virtually immersed myself in the glamor of the macro and high finance.
The year 2013 witnessed a U-turn of my professional life, propelling me to dive from the pinnacle of the pyramid proudly above the clouds to the down-to-earth humility of financial inclusion. The reason? Through practices and observations, I came to the enlightenment that China is set to enter a new age of financial inclusion. Since the Reform and Opening-Up, China has in a sequential manner built a modern banking system, a modern capital market, and a seemingly all-encompassing modern financial system covering insurance, trust, and asset management, etc. This system, however, has a severe structural deficiency hidden inside of it, namely an exclusion from the system, to varied extents, of the numerous micro-, small and medium-sized businesses and other vulnerable groups. A gradually emerging consensus is that this structural deficiency has posed a lethal threat to China's sustained and sound economic growth. China is crying out for an inclusive financial system.
Like climbing a mountain, building an inclusive financial system is easier said than done. The paradoxes and confusions concerning significant philosophical ideas, the conflicts and balance between the dual mandate of commercial viability and social good, and the scheming and synthesis between legacy finance and Fintech are among the topics that warrant meticulous investigations and solutions in the cause of financial inclusion.
Chinese Academy of Financial Inclusion, aspiring to the sky whilst firmly standing on the ground in its relentless pursuit of excellence, is determined to become China's leading research institution. We are gratified to see that our efforts and achievements have been winning for us more and more partners. Traversing the path towards "Good finance, Good Society", we are not solitary travelers.
At CAFI, the President is responsible for running the organization under the leadership of the Council Board. As the decision-making body, the Council Board is responsible for nominating the President and the Vice President, participating in the governance and development of the organization, and providing suggestions on major strategies and outlining plans for future developments of CAFI.
The Council Board consists of Executive Council Members and Council Members, who are representatives of our prestigious partner institutions or other highly influential government officials, scholars, or industry practitioners.
CAFI invites high influential people in the Financial Inclusion filed all over the world to join the committee. The committee is responsible for giving consultant and guidance to the current and future research program.
Academic Advisory Committee (In Alphabetical Order)：
His research covers finance theory, the sociology of finance, economic history, emerging markets, as well as China's economy and capital markets. He was also a Special-Term Visiting Professor at Peking University (School of Economics) and Tsinghua University (School of Social Sciences).
Mr. Chu currently holds the co-chairmanships of two executive education programs, HBS–ACCION Program on Strategic Leadership in Inclusive Finance and Business Innovations in Global Health Care. He once served as President and CEO of ACCION International, in which capacity he participated in the founding and governance of several regulated microfinance banks throughout Latin America, including Compartarmos Banco, which, upon its IPO in the Mexican Stock Exchange, became the world's first listed microfinance institution.
Matthew Gamser is CEO of the SME Finance Forum, the world's leading center for knowledge exchange, good practice promotion and public-private dialogue in this field. Dr. Gamser has over 40 years' experience in private enterprise and financial sector development. He has worked for IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, for 17 years in various positions from Washington, DC, and Hong Kong, where he has focused on SME finance and on financial sector development. Prior to that he spent 25 years in management consulting and in senior leadership in an international NGO. He holds A.B. and A.M. degrees from Harvard University, and M.Sc. and D.Phil degrees from Sussex University (UK), where his work focused on the management of technological change.
Professor Morduch has been conducting a long-term research initiative known as "Financial Diaries" and focused upon innovative activities that aim at expanding finance's frontiers and methods how finance influences economic growth and reducing inequality through finance. He is a founder and Executive Director of the NYU Financial Access Initiative. In 2009 Prof. Morduch was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Brussels for his work on microfinance.
Dr. Rhyne is committed to facilitating a healthy growth of financial inclusion and challenging legacy rules of the industry in order to achieve client empowerment as well as better service and protection of the clients. She is a co-founder of the Smart Campaign, a global movement that spearheads client protection principles in microfinance and thus has an impact on the service rules of financial inclusion. Dr. Rhyne had led the Microenterprise Initiative of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the 1990s.
While working at the World Bank, Dr. Wang participated in and led several policy research and advisory projects concerning China's financial reform, theories and practices of rural finance and microfinance, housing finance, and catastrophe risk management and financing. He led commercial bank microlending demonstration project, which successfully promoted the commercially sustainable proliferation of microlending and policy reforms in the related areas.
Dr. Wu, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), has been playing an instrumental role in facilitating the building and sound development of a multi-layered capital market in China. Prior to joining WFE, he serviced as Director-Generals of the Department of Institutional Supervision and the Department of Fund Supervision, consecutively, of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) and the CCP committee secretary and President of the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE). Dr. Wu currently serves as a Deputy Mayor of the Municipality of Shanghai.
Acclaimed as an instrumental promoter of financial inclusion in China, Ms. Wu designed and led China's pilot program of microcredit companies and advocated and founded "Jinhui Project", a nationwide public-interest initiative. She is committed to the dissemination of financial knowledge, education and training and has made substantial contributions to the development of financial education in China. Ms. Wu was also a former member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, in which capacity she served as the Ranking Member of the Congress's Financial and Economic Affairs Committee.
Dr. Xie first coined the term "Internet finance" and contributes substantially to the theoretical research and practical development of internet finance in China. He is a multiple winner of China's prestigious Sun Yefang Economic Science Award and the laureate of the debut Sun Yefang Financial Innovations Award (2014). Among his major publications are Handbook for Internet Finance and Nine Lectures on Internet Finance.
Mr. XU Jinghui is the former General Manager of Dajia Insurance Group. He also served as the Chairman of CPIC Life, the Chairman of Changjiang Pension, the Executive Vice President of the CPIC, a Supervisor of Shanghai Insurance Exchange, a member of Advisory Committee for Major Policy Decision of CIRC, the Vice Chairman of Insurance Association of China, and the Vice Chairman of China Association of Actuaries. Mr. Xu holds a master’s degree in Business Administration and is a senior economist.
Known as "the banker to the poor", Dr. Yunus is the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, economist, and founder of Grameen Bank. He created and nurtured microlending services, designed to provide loans to entrepreneurs who are traditionally excluded from the tranditional bank lending because of poverty. Dr. Yunus has received over 60 honors and recognitions worldwide.
She has spent most of her career working for the central bank, as Assistant Governor of the PBC, a member of the PBC Monetary Policy Committee (June 2015-March 2018), Director General of the Monetary Policy Department and the Financial Market Department of the PBC, Senior Advisor to China's IMF Executive Director, Chief Representative of the PBC's Office in America and etc. Most of her life has been devoted to the research of macroeconomics, monetary policy, financial reform, RMB Internationalization, interest rate, exchange rate and etc.
