What role will the Internet finance play when China is deepening its financial reform and promoting its economic development? This is one of the questions that Institute of Internet Finance (IIF), Peking University aims to answer. On June 6, 2015, Institute of Internet Finance, Peking University was formally established. The cosponsors of IIF are Institute of Social Science Survey (ISSS) at Peking University, Shanghai Finance Institute (SFI) and Ant Financial Services Group. The members of the research team are mainly professors from National School of Development at Peking University (NSD). After the establishment of the institute, it takes the professional team from IIF as the basis, utilizing massive Internet data and strong power of data mining and computing so that IIF can provide authoritative research findings and serve the development and the regulation of the Internet finance. Furthermore, according to the strategic planning of IIF, the institution as an open platform of research will gradually bring in and utilize data provided by other Internet financial institutions, and researches will be carried out based on more data.

It is said that Ant Financial Services Group will provide IIF with a laboratory of closed environment, where researchers have access to samples and indexes which are randomly selected and desensitized. At the same time, Ant Financial Services Group also provides one-stop infrastructures for application development, including the data exchanges and integration in the early stage, data modeling and mining in the middle stage and at last the data output service platform. IIF implements the system that directors assume the overall responsibility under the leadership of the Council. Representatives from sponsors are founding members of the Council and they are: Li Qiang, Director of the Institute of Social Science Survey; Wang Haiming, Executive President of SFI; Chen Long, CSO of Ant Financial Services Group. Li qiang takes the chair of the Council. In future, the Council will gradually attract other Internet financial institutions to join in.

Prof. Huang Yiping, Vice President of NSD, is the first direct of IIF, and Wang Haiming is Executive Deputy Director of IIF. The members of IIF include Shen Yan, Xu Jianguo, Huang Zhuo from NSD, Kong Tao from ISSS and other researchers of professor level. In addition, IIF plans to recruit several full-time postdoctoral researchers each year, and it will recruit young researchers from China Finance 40 Forum and Shanghai Finance Institute as research assistant. According to Huang Yiping, IIF will focus on three aspects of issues: the first is to explore the operational mechanism of the Internet financial institutions; the second is to grasp the situation of industry development through a number of researches on indexes; the third is to study the impact and challenges brought by Internet finance on the proposition and implementation of macroeconomic policies in China, as well as to provide useful reference for regulators and decision makers. It is said that the research products of IIF include regular and occasional research reports, academic papers, policy briefs, the Internet finance indexes and etc. In recent years, digital finance industry has prospered in China. Based on the development of the industry, digital finance theories started from scratched, seizing the attention from scholars. Established with joint efforts, the Institute of Digital Finance of Peking University (IDF) is destined to promote the academic and policy research on digital finance in China.

Background information: Institute of Social Science Survey (ISSS), PKU is an interdisciplinary research platform on social problems and current affairs in China. It has internationally advanced research method, rich experience and influential nation-wide tracking research projects; CF40 and its subordinate Shanghai Finance Institute (SFI) is the leading financial think tank in China, rich in research results and digital finance industry resources; Ant Financial Services Group has vast data accumulation, advanced cloud computing and big data techniques, making it influential within the industry. National School of Development (NSD), PKU is the top university think tank gathering numerous experienced professors. It has been exerting significant influences in many fields concerning China’s economic development and reform. The cooperation among these institutes is, undoubtedly, a typical strong cooperation channeling top industry-university-research cooperation.