The earliest financial institution in Dehong was "New town money shop" opened by Dao Anren, one of the pioneers in the 1911 Revolution.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the first bank in Dehong Prefecture was the People's Bank of China, Luxi County Branch. By 1953, the People's Bank of China had been set up branches in each county of the Prefecture. However, up until 1979, People's Bank of China had been the only bank in Dehong.

In 1988, the first Urban Credit Cooperative was established in Luxi County. In the same year, the Dehong Branch of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange was set up. By the end of 1992, Dehong had 223 financial institutions spread across the Prefecture. The total deposits in those institutions amounted to 1.331 b yuan, among which savings deposits from urban and rural residents were 60.217 m yuan. Sufficient funds from financial institutions provided strong support to the development of Dehong Prefecture.

Later on, Dehong Autonomous Prefecture continued to carry out a steady monetary policy and continued to speed up financial reforms. This allowed Dehong Autonomous Prefecture to provide good financial services to local residents, enterprises and investors from outside the Prefecture.

By the end of 2005, the deposits in all financial institutions in Dehong amounted to 10.773 b yuan, among which 1.958 b yuan was from enterprises, and 7.178 b yuan from urban and rural residents. The loans issued by those financial institutions reached 5.997 b yuan, among which 2.266 b yuan were short-term loans, and 3.731 b yuan long-term loans. Most of the loans were used in infrastructure construction such as electric plants,, highways, urban construction, and agriculture.