Consumption upgrade creates opportunities

A1 An important aspect of the financial sector is to support the real economy. Guided by this principle, the bank's business priorities are covering those industries that have been fueling the long-term development of the country. The market is seeing a number of changes to the sustainability agenda which is aligned with the economic transformation of China.

Beyond the new energy vehicle sector, the future of power relies on inventions and adoptions of the latest technological breakthroughs. As a committed China market partner, BNP Paribas supports sustainable industries through underwriting corporate bonds and offering green loans and other products to help corporates fulfill their green ambitions, which range from distributed power to low consumption, and from offshore to onshore wind.

A3 Nowadays, fintech plays a key role in the retail and consumption sectors in terms of facilitating the development of cross-border e-commerce. China is already the world's largest market for mobile payments, and it is expected to see total cashless payments reach $45 trillion by 2021.

BNP Paribas is riding the trend to develop a digital ecosystem to meet evolving needs with innovative solutions, providing advanced digital payment solutions to improve the efficiency of the value chain and to ultimately enhance the user experience of e-commerce.

For instance, we formed a strategic partnership with Lianlian Pay, a mobile payment company in China, to collaboratively develop a digital solution that can streamline the collections process by consolidating online sales and offline mobile collections onto a single platform.

A6 We see China's strong determination to further open up the financial market, which is reflected by overseas investors swarming into the Chinese bond market. The inclusion of Chinese government debt in global indices will attract more than $2 trillion in foreign investments into the country over the next two years.

BNP Paribas obtained a Type B corporate panda bond lead underwriting license in 2018. Since then, the bank has been successfully helping foreign corporate issuers to tap into the growing China Interbank Bond Market.

China's Relevant Measures for Further Opening Up Financial Sector released in July permit foreign banks to apply for the first time for a Type A license, which allows them to lead underwrite onshore corporate bonds issued by Chinese domestic companies. In September, just two months later, BNP Paribas became one of the first two foreign banks to be awarded the Type A corporate bond lead underwriting license from China's National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors.

Being the only foreign bank in China holding both the Type A and Type B licenses enables us to fully unleash our strengths in domestic expertise coupled with worldwide access, to serve our clients when they are looking into opportunities in China's growing capital markets.