Lu Zhaoqing, Board Chair of Hengchuang Group, is Blazing a Trail for China's Fintech Industry

On January 18, the 2019 Chinese New Year Gala for Entrepreneurs and Municipal Leaders, organized by Shenzhen Enterprise Confederation, Shenzhen Entrepreneur Association, and the Times Entrepreneur magazine, took place at the Bao'an Stadium. This was a gathering of Shenzhen's municipal leaders and over 5000 local entrepreneurs. The 3rd Award for Shenzhen's New Generation of Excellent Entrepreneurs was presented at the event. Eligible candidates for the award included role-model entrepreneurs from Shenzhen's various industries, including the city's pillar industries and strategic emerging industries. 60 recipients were selected according to a multitude of assessment criteria. Lu Zhaoqing, Board Chair of Hengchuang Group and Jinyuan Investment Group, received the award as an outstanding representative of the fintech industry.

"In the course of its development, fintech has reached a tipping point where a shift from building platforms and formulating concepts to transforming the shape of the industry must occur." As a trailblazer in the industry, he understands fintech in a different way. In his view, fintech has been increasingly showing its advantages in advocating inclusive finance, improving client experience, and enhancing transparency. Finance is the lifeblood of the national economy, and sci-tech has to reshape the internal processes and links in each segment of finance because that is how it can really propel the transformation and upgrading of China's financial industrial towards serving the real economy.

Lu Zhaoqing holds an MBA degree from the Guanghua School of Management, Peking University and has over 10 years of experience working with global financial groups. He once assumed senior management positions at Huaxia Bank and Worldunion Properties, among others. He is now the Vice President of Shenzhen Enterprise Confederation, the Executive Vice President of Shenzhen General Chamber of Commerce, the Vice President of Urban Innovation Research Academy, a council member of Shenzhen Private Equity Association, and the Vice President of Chongqing Chamber of Commerce in Shenzhen.

His constant dedication to finance has endowed him with a solid theoretical foundation, an abundance of practical experience, and a global vision. He is an expert on capital operation and risk control. And he has a profound understanding of things like fintech, asset management, and investment management.

Back in 2012, he acutely sensed that, if a financial firm was to prosper over the long run, it had to come up with an innovative model whereby it could serve the real economy and facilitate the country's industrial upgrades. Technologies like cloud computing and big data have since gradually matured, laying the technical groundwork for implementing financial innovations, for examples, those offering easy financing to micro, small and medium-scale businesses. In 2013, Lu Zhaoqing chose fintech when he started his own business, Hengchuang Group, amid the boom of financial innovations.

The group has made a series of sci-tech innovations and ameliorated corporate risk control systems. These efforts have been widely recognized by the industry and the general public, since they have effectively lowered transaction costs and boosted efficiency in finance as well as fintech. The group's fintech division has entered into strategic partnerships with many large state-owned companies, central government-run companies, and financial institutions. It now serves over 20 thousand clients of inclusive finance, and this part of its business is worth close to CNY 30 billion, securing it a top 3 spot in South China.

In 2018, Lu Zhaoqing received the Hurun Award for New Finance Rising Stars of 2018 and a number of honorary titles, such as Honorary Business Ambassador to Cambridge and Hurun Young Industry Leaders of 2018.

Hengchuang Group, with Lu Zhaoqing at the helm, has experienced and witnessed the development of fintech in China. It will double down on fintech and ramp up financial innovations to push for finance-industry integration and drive change to the industry as a pioneer.