Deepening FX Facilitation in Financial Services Trade and Upgrading & Expanding Bank Due Diligence Reform

Against the backdrop of advancing high-level opening-up, financial services trade serves as a crucial pillar of cross-border economic and trade exchanges, whose development quality and efficiency directly impact the operational vitality of foreign-related economic entities and their capacity for global resource allocation. At present, the reform of foreign exchange (FX) facilitation is advancing in depth, while the reform of bank due diligence is simultaneously being upgraded and expanded. Through process restructuring, institutional innovation and technological empowerment, these initiatives are injecting new development momentum into financial services. On the premise of balancing opening-up and security, they are enabling more market entities to reap the benefits of convenient cross-border financial services, propelling financial services trade toward a more efficient, inclusive and secure trajectory.

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The development of financial services trade hinges on the efficient and smooth flow of cross-border capital, and FX facilitation acts as the core lever to remove bottlenecks in capital flows and reduce transaction costs. Previously, the traditional FX business processing model was constrained by in-process transaction-by-transaction verification and multi-layered document examination. This not only subjected market entities to lengthy processing times and cumbersome documentation requirements, but also restricted the service efficiency of financial services trade to a certain extent. With the advancement of FX facilitation reform, the industry is establishing a credit-based differentiated service system, which integrates pre-transaction customer due diligence, in-process classified verification and post-transaction risk monitoring, breaking the previous single-mode verification approach. For market entities with sound credit standing, FX transactions can now be processed promptly upon instruction, with the handling time for a single transaction shortened from hours to minutes. This has significantly reduced enterprises' labor and time costs, and the improved capital turnover efficiency has also made the service response speed of financial trade more aligned with market demands.

Meanwhile, the expansion of bank due diligence reform has emerged as a key measure to drive the upgrading of financial services trade. The reform has broken banks' past reliance on in-process document verification in FX businesses, prompting them to establish a full-cycle due diligence management framework. Covering front-end customer identification and classification, mid-process differentiated verification implementation, and back-end risk monitoring and analysis, this framework forms a closed-loop management system. Banks have been granted greater autonomy in verification, allowing them to formulate customized service solutions based on their own risk management capabilities and customers' actual situations. This change has made banks' cross-border financial services more targeted, and also enabled the supply side of financial services trade to better adapt to the diversified market demands. Currently, the coverage of due diligence reform is expanding steadily, with various banking institutions participating actively. Their service networks have extended to all regions across the country, covering not only large and medium-sized foreign-related enterprises, but also incorporating numerous micro, small and medium-sized market entities into the scope of facilitation services, thus significantly enhancing the inclusiveness of financial services trade.

The quality improvement and efficiency enhancement of financial services trade require a dual balance between facilitation and risk prevention and control. The in-depth integration of FX facilitation and bank due diligence reform is fostering an industry ecosystem characterized by the principle of "greater convenience for better credibility and more autonomy for stronger compliance". During the reform process, as important service providers in financial services trade, banks have also upgraded their risk prevention and control capabilities simultaneously. Empowered by technological means, banks have built intelligent risk monitoring systems, achieving full-cycle and precision monitoring of cross-border capital flows. Through a combination of technological and manual prevention measures, these systems can not only promptly identify abnormal transaction behaviors and safeguard the security bottom line of cross-border capital flows, but also ensure "non-interference for compliant operations" for law-abiding market entities. This upgrading of the risk control model has enabled financial services to consolidate the barrier of risk prevention and control while enjoying the dividends of facilitation, laying a foundation for the sustainable and healthy development of financial services.

Amid the wave of globalization in financial services trade, the expansion of FX facilitation and bank due diligence reform is still in progress. Looking ahead, the industry will continue to be guided by market demands, further expand the coverage of the reform, enable more market entities of different types and scales to enjoy the dividends of facilitation policies, and promote the continuous expansion of trade service coverage. Meanwhile, technological empowerment will become an important direction for the deepening of the reform. Technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data will be deeply integrated with bank due diligence, driving the implementation of the "intelligent due diligence" model, realizing the goal of "more data travel, less customer hassle", and further improving the digitalization and intelligence level of financial services trade. In addition, various facilitation policies will be implemented in a more efficient and integrated manner, forming a standardized, unified and easy-to-operate service system, making cross-border FX transaction processing more efficient and smooth, and laying a solid foundation for the high-quality development of financial services trade.

The development level of financial services trade is an important indicator of a country's degree of opening-up. The continuous deepening of FX facilitation and bank due diligence reform is steadily consolidating the foundation for the development of financial services. From process simplification to service upgrading, and from scope expansion to technological empowerment, the reform has brought about not only the improvement of cross-border financial service efficiency, but also the optimization of the financial services trade ecosystem. Under the requirement of balancing high-level opening-up and high-quality security, FX facilitation and bank due diligence reform will continue to advance in coordination, driving financial services to better serve the high-quality development of the real economy, and providing stronger financial support for the globalized operation of foreign-related economic entities.