On September 16, the 2026 "Bankers' Insight" Symposium convened successfully, organized by the editorial department of Tsinghua Financial Review at the PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University. Themed "From Scale Expansion to Value Creation: Divergence and Transformation of China's Banking Industry in the Low-Interest Era," the event brought together seasoned industry experts and senior banking leaders to exchange views on critical topics, including technological financial innovation amid K-shaped divergence, interpretations of the draft Financial Law and the fresh landscape of compliance management, strategic choices in AI adoption and their practical exploration, as well as the developmental trajectory of artificial general intelligence.
Zhang Wei, a member of the Party Committee, Assistant to the Dean of the PBC School of Finance, and Executive Editor-in-Chief of Tsinghua Financial Review, delivered the opening address. He emphasized that the banking sector is a core pillar of China's financial system, noting that Tsinghua Financial Review has consistently dedicated itself to in-depth banking research, tracking the forefront of industry reforms and pivotal issues. Zhang Wei elaborated on the current landscape: while Chinese banks face both opportunities and challenges, the opportunities are driven by the continuous release of policy dividends, the deepening expansion of structural space, and the accelerating empowerment of technological transformation. Conversely, challenges arise from pronounced net interest margin compression, intensifying economic divergence, and profound shifts in demographic structures. He concluded that the interplay of these factors is steering the banking sector through an era of divergence and transformation amidst low interest rates, prompting a decisive shift from scale-driven expansion to value-centric creation, with expectations that the industry will uncover new opportunities within this divergence and forge new pathways through transformation.
In his keynote speech, Guo Tianyong, Professor at the School of Finance, Central University of Finance and Economics and Director of the China Banking Research Center, underscored that the banking industry remains the primary battleground for advancing fintech. Guo proposed a three-pronged approach to invigorate banks' support for technological innovation: first, promoting synergy between fintech and tech-finance by leveraging big data and artificial intelligence to precisely identify innovative enterprises for targeted marketing and risk control; second, developing bespoke products and tools that cater to companies at their seed, growth, and maturity stages; and third, refining the loan-equity linkage mechanism by encouraging banks to establish proprietary investment platforms, thereby serving the full lifecycle of tech-driven enterprises. Additionally, Guo cautioned against underestimating the critical role of government investment in tech-finance, given its vast scale and its reach into some high-tech ventures, positioning it as an indispensable force within the broader framework.
Yang Dong, Dean of the Law School and the School of Foreign-Related Law at Renmin University of China, framed the Financial Law as a foundational institutional project for building a financial powerhouse. He explained that the concentrated formulation and revision of the Financial Law, alongside the People's Bank of China Law and the Banking Supervision and Administration Law, marks a historic milestone in China's legal framework for financial strength, carrying significant implications for the banking industry and further cementing the role of banks within the financial system. Yang stressed that the law's significance is encapsulated in three dimensions: reconstruction, which focuses on overhauling existing legal oversight, bolstering unified supervision, and aligning with institutional reforms in financial regulation; safeguarding, which aims to mitigate potential financial risks while reserving institutional space for emerging sectors like digital finance; and foundationalism, which seeks to return to the essence of finance and consolidate the achievements of financial reforms since the 18th CPC National Congress. As a comprehensive governing law for the financial sector, it achieves a high degree of integration in legislative philosophy and establishes unified, coherent value principles for all financial laws and regulations.
Shen Yang, a dual-appointed professor at the School of Journalism and the School of Artificial Intelligence at Tsinghua University, highlighted that the financial industry can systematically deploy intelligent agents to embrace a paradigm shift. Shen observed that against the backdrop of rapid technological advancement, self-evolution has become an irreversible trend, with traditional development models reliant on manual tuning inevitably heading for obsolescence. He argued that the crucial step for industry application lies in constructing an organized intelligent framework, where human expertise is distilled into reusable skills to achieve optimal output within finite computing budgets. To this end, the financial sector should prioritize five key actions: developing vertical-domain "automated researchers" to boost research efficiency; advancing customer service self-evolution to narrow the gap with human interactions; integrating internal and external data to secure positive returns on investment; achieving real-time risk control, shifting from post-hoc to instantaneous assessments as AI erases information asymmetries; and preparing for Agent-to-Agent (A2A) services.
Wang Xiayan, Deputy Director of the Digital RMB Promotion Office at China Construction Bank, discussed how artificial intelligence is driving a comprehensive digital transformation of bank governance. Wang pointed out that while traditional finance is typically initiated by humans, the finance of the future will be characterized by ubiquitous connectivity, where autonomous transactions among physical entities become commonplace. With the deep enablement of AI, he suggested that conventional finance, controlled by people, is set to evolve into future finance triggered and managed by digital personas. Wang foresees that AI will permeate every facet of banking—ranging from organizational structures and innovation models to product offerings, operations, and risk management—for instance, moving from historically rigid bank organizations toward a model composed of "agents plus intelligent platforms." Looking ahead, he predicted that banking operational models may transition from human-to-human coordination to machine-to-machine collaboration or hybrid human-machine cooperation.
During the symposium, Qin Ting, Deputy Director of the Financial Review Business Division at Beijing Qingkong Jinmei, unveiled the 2026 China Banking Top 200 Research Report. This marks the sixth consecutive annual release of the "China Banking Top 200" ranking by Tsinghua Financial Review since 2021. The list includes two distinct rankings: the "2026 China Banking Top 200: Capital Strength Ranking," which evaluates institutions based solely on core tier-1 capital adequacy, and the "2026 China Banking Top 200: Competitiveness Ranking," which offers a comprehensive assessment across multiple indicators. The report employs rigorous comparative data analysis to offer deep insights into the divergence and transformation of China's banking sector in a low-interest environment, while thoroughly investigating new explorations in areas such as intelligent transformation and wealth management, ultimately proposing actionable strategies for industry transition.
Ni Jun, Chief Banking Analyst at GF Securities, and Du Qinchuan, Chief Policy and Banking Analyst at Zheshang Securities, provided expert commentary on the report. Both analysts concurred that the report features meticulous and comprehensive data, systematically presenting the operational landscape and transformation trends of the top 200 banks. They praised it for accurately reflecting the development trajectory of the banking industry and serving as an essential reference for industry research and strategic business decision-making.