Sun Yat-sen University - Research on Demand and Business Development of Cross-border Retail Finance
Company overview
Sun Yat-sen University is a nationally key university directly administered by the Ministry of Education, ranked among China's 'Double First-Class' A-class institutions, the 985 Project, and the 211 Project. Founded in 1924 by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, it was originally named Guangdong National University and later renamed Sun Yat-sen University in his honor. The university currently operates across three campuses—Guangzhou, Zhuhai, and Shenzhen—with five campuses in total. It offers a wide range of academic disciplines and boasts strong overall strength, with its medical, humanities and social sciences, ecology, and mathematics, physics, and business administration programs ranking among the top in China. The university is home to several nationally renowned affiliated hospitals, demonstrating exceptional research and medical capabilities. Its motto is 'Seeking Knowledge, Questioning, Thinking Carefully, Discriminating Clearly, and Acting with Determination.' It is one of China's leading comprehensive research universities.
Research background
As the integration and high-level opening-up of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area continue to advance, residents in the region are increasingly engaging in routine cross-border activities such as cross-border movement, consumption, employment, income settlement, pension and medical expense payments, and asset allocation. In this context, residents' personal financial needs for cross-border transactions are steadily increasing. However, these needs are constrained by regulatory frameworks including foreign exchange controls, cross-border investment boundaries, anti-money laundering requirements, and product sales regulations. As a result, individuals often face challenges such as high policy comprehension costs, inefficient processes, opaque fee and exchange rate mechanisms, and limited access to product information. Therefore, it is essential to systematically identify the genuine demand structure, usage scenarios, and service pain points of cross-border retail finance from the perspective of residents in the Greater Bay Area, providing a foundation for business research and financial service optimization.
Research scope
In December 2025, CEIDEA Research was commissioned by Sun Yat-sen University to conduct academic research on the demand and development of cross-border retail finance. This study focuses on residents of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, collecting data through an online questionnaire survey. The survey covers nine inland cities of the GBA: Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, Dongguan, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, and Zhaoqing. Based on the questionnaire design, the research primarily examines residents' cross-border activities, including their primary place of work, frequency of cross-border activities, holdings of overseas assets, awareness and experience with Hong Kong and Macao financial products, cross-border consumption, investment, pension arrangements, and professional settlement in foreign jurisdictions. It also investigates preferences for investment horizons, information sources, awareness of relevant policies and service needs, methods of fund settlement, factors influencing settlement decisions, interest in financial products and services, satisfaction with existing processes, and recommendations for optimizing cross-border financial services provided by commercial banks. The study aims to systematically identify the scale, structure, segmentation characteristics, and future development directions of cross-border retail financial demand among residents in the Greater Bay Area.
Expected outcomes
This study is expected to systematically present the core scenarios, user profiles, behavioral characteristics, and key barriers of cross-border retail financial demand among residents in the Greater Bay Area. It will identify the actual demand intensity and supply gaps in key scenarios such as cross-border consumption, investment, pension, and professional settlement, and further provide targeted research references and business insights for commercial banks and relevant stakeholders in areas such as product supply, process optimization, fee and exchange rate mechanisms, policy advisory services, and tailored operations for specific customer segments.
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