Regional Icebreaker Session (Part 2): How Effective Are the Local Practices of Financial Advisors' Transformation?

Ask AI · How can regional practices guide residents’ savings to shift toward long-term investment?

Special correspondent Wang Lining · Jingji Daily reporter Xia Xin · Beijing, Guangzhou, Hefei report

When investment advisors shift to serving the buy-side, a “slow variable” reshaping industry logic has quietly begun to take effect. As regional practices in Guangzhou and Anhui are rolled out one after another, a deeper question is starting to come into view: in this shift to buy-side investment advisory, exactly what is being reshaped?

At the surface level, the transition first changes the way financial institutions operate—moving from a business logic centered on product sales to a long-term companionship oriented toward customer service; from a short-term earnings model that relies on transaction commissions and subscription fees, gradually transitioning to a long-term value-creation mechanism based on ongoing service charges.

At its root, the buy-side investment advisory transition touches upon structural issues that China’s capital market has long faced over the long term: for example, how to effectively convert the vast pool of residents’ savings into long-term capital? How to ensure professional financial services truly cover and serve ordinary investors? How can finance drive the development of regional economies and even the entire country? And how can we shift market funds’ behavior from short-term trading toward long-term allocation?

These questions are not new. Over the past two decades, regulators, academia, and industry institutions have all repeatedly discussed related topics, but have consistently lacked an effective handle. The emergence of buy-side investment advisory seems to provide a new entry point for these problems.

Unlike past approaches that often stayed at the level of institutional design or advocacy of ideas, the buy-side investment advisory transition starts with regional practices—begins with the internal restructuring of institutions—and, most importantly, rebuilds the most basic relationship between investment advisors and customers.

Beyond the regional samples of Guangzhou and Anhui, more specific questions about the buy-side investment advisory transition still need answers: Can institutions’ business logic truly be flipped? Can residents’ investment behavior be changed systematically? This transition—many people in investment practice call it “hard but correct”—just how far can it go?

Rebuilding Business Models of Investment Institutions

The impact of buy-side investment advisory on institutions is, first of all, a “surgery” on the income structure.

Under a sell-side logic, institutions’ money comes from product sales—subscription fees and trailing commissions—without any direct relationship to whether the customer makes money. The more frequently customers churn, the more stable the institution’s income becomes. This logic works smoothly when the market is expanding rapidly, but when volatility increases and losses accumulate, misalignment of interests becomes difficult to conceal. What buy-side investment advisory aims to do is to reverse this structure—tie institutional income to customers’ long-term allocation experience, so that only by delivering great service can the institution continue to earn returns.

“While investment institutions provide service to customers in the process of promoting the sale of financial products, they find customers have many pain points, and solving these pain points needs to start from the business model.” Xu Haining, founder, chairman, and CEO of Shanghai Qihui Technology, told Jingji Daily reporters. As early as 2018 and 2019, 东方证券 (Oriental Securities) began exploring this path—not because of regulatory requirements, but because customers pushed the company into it. At that time, the company applied for a 2.0 billion yuan seed fund to co-invest and recommend products to customers. “I tell customers that the financial product I’m recommending to you also has an investment from Oriental Securities—we are also holders; our interests are highly aligned with customers.” She acknowledged this was an improvement under the sell-side model, but the logic already pointed toward the buy-side.

However, at that time, 99.9% of the market was still sell-side. By self-improvement of a single institution alone, it’s hard to change the industry ecosystem. Xu Haining said bluntly that the transition to buy-side investment advisory is “absolutely not a solo act by a single institution or a single department; it requires a systematic project such as policy guidance, ecosystem coordination, and institution-to-institution linkage.”

The significance of the practices in Guangzhou and Anhui lies here.

One approach uses policy as a lever to build a complete ecosystem; the other starts from genuine needs from the industry side to form an endogenous path. With both different demonstrations existing simultaneously, the industry gains identifiable coordinates. Guangzhou reflects a systematic and ecological layer-by-layer transformation logic at the underlying level: the shift of wealth management toward buy-side investment advisory needs to be systemized—it is not about doing one good thing, but about rebuilding and reconstituting an ecosystem of organizations. Anhui further extends investment advisory services toward industry and technology, staying close to the national strategy of building a country strong in science and technology, so that the transition of buy-side investment advisory forms the “sparks that spread into a prairie fire” effect, starting from points and radiating outward.

“Anhui’s practice is not an isolated display piece; it is a new blueprint for innovative operations models.” Liang Huabin, vice president of Guoyuan Securities, believes that launching a transition to buy-side investment advisory is a “strategic lever for broker development.” The practices of Guangzhou and Anhui have brought real pressure and momentum for industry institutions to transition. Guoyuan Securities’ buy-side investment advisory transformation demonstration base is both a deep participant and a direct beneficiary, providing a replicable paradigm sample that helps traditional branches break out. She believes that after the rollout of Anhui’s 12 initiatives, representative regional securities firms will have better innovative development and ways of thinking—reconstructing their own organizational structure for buy-side investment advisory with the customer at the center.

Regarding the choice of paths for buy-side investment advisory transition, Xu Haining offered four suggestions: persist in combining local characteristics with top-level design, and let each locality rely on its own resource endowments to build a differentiated buy-side investment advisory ecosystem; plan with the mindset of “ten years磨一剑 (a decade to forge a sword),” because only long-term practice can form a true “muscle memory”; continue to push for two-way efforts between regulation and institutions, with institutions taking initiative; and establish a coordinated ecosystem mechanism that integrates the asset end, the client end, and the talent end.

Xiaowen, chair of Yimifund, understands this commercial model reconstruction from a more macro perspective. In her view, the significance of the investment advisory transition is by no means limited to upgrading business; it resonates deeply with the logic of the “15th Five-Year Plan for the 2026-2030 period.” “Asset management is investing in things; wealth management is serving people. Its core is people.” She points out that health and wealth are the two major life challenges faced by ordinary Chinese investors. Therefore, while serving customers, buy-side investment advisory helps investors form truly effective investment logic and investment concepts at the wealth level, and helps improve investors’ financial quotient (financial literacy and decision-making ability). In essence, it is also investing in people.

She also believes that building an investment-advisory ecosystem cannot rely solely on market institutions. There is a fundamental flaw in that approach: only government can build an ecosystem; an individual enterprise has limitations in building one. Guangzhou systematically incorporates elements such as policy, talent, research, and technology. This is an overall reconstruction at the level of the industrial chain, not just a localized optimization by one institution or one type of business.

Xiaowen’s expectations for the future also fall on concrete operations: ecosystem building, technology empowerment, and the company’s affiliated institutions truly pushing through execution. There should be hands-on implementation, standards, indicators, and truly measurable results—forming a closed loop. In Xiaowen’s view, achieving this closed loop essentially transforms wealth management from “a business of selling products” into “a career of serving people.”

From existing institutional data, this logic has already begun to be validated in localized areas. Objectively, the transition also provides smaller and mid-sized institutions the possibility of “overtaking on a curve”—compared with the traditional sell-side model that carries historical burdens, buy-side investment advisory gives institutions a differentiated “second growth curve.”

Guoyuan Securities lists the transition of buy-side investment advisory as the company’s “No. 1 project.” After rebuilding its organizational structure and assessment mechanisms, customer retention in the Hefei demonstration base exceeds 95%, and satisfaction reaches 96%. Under Huian Securities, the “XinYiTou” investment advisory brand has an overall proportion of profitable customers of 87.7%, more than 10 percentage points higher than non-investment-advisory customers.

Behind the numbers is a service logic oriented toward customers’ long-term experience, replacing the previous assessment system centered on sales scale. However, improvements in data do not mean that bigger scale always brings advantage; the depth and quality of the transition are sometimes more critical than the initial size.

Industry insiders point out that Yimifund’s ranking among major firms in terms of scale is ahead—one of the earliest institutions to obtain eligibility—having accumulated nearly six years of transition experience, while many brokers that obtained licenses earliest still have smaller scale even to this day, or have not really started. Therefore, scale is not the key to winning. Sometimes institutions with excessive legacy assets are instead dragged down by historical burdens from the sell-side era and do not dare to discard the traditional “trinkets” that have poor customer experience. This suggests that for smaller and mid-sized institutions, a transition to buy-side investment advisory may indeed be a differentiated path worth taking.

Liu Yuzhen, a specially appointed professor at Peking University, believes that local governments play roles as “policy testing grounds” and “ecosystem catalysts” in driving the market transition for buy-side investment advisory. Guangzhou, through its “10 investment-advisory rules,” builds a “1+4+N” policy framework, promoting the transition of buy-side investment advisory from “spontaneous evolution” to “policy-led transition.” Anhui, through the TAMP platform co-built with Yimifund, effectively alleviates bottlenecks for smaller and mid-sized institutions in terms of resource and capability building. She suggests that a service quality evaluation system should be established as soon as possible, bringing in third-party independent institutions to assess customer satisfaction and return experience. At the same time, complaint handling and dispute-resolution mechanisms should be strengthened to enhance investor trust.

Optimize the Market’s Capital Structure

Changing the logic at the institutional level is only the first step of this transition. Harder still is changing investors’ behavior.

China’s capital market has long faced the “retailization” dilemma: individual investors make up a high proportion, holding periods are short, people chase after price increases and sell in panic, and market volatility is continuously amplified, while long-term capital has always been scarce. The phrase “long-term money entering the market” is mentioned again and again, but a mechanism that truly helps residents “hold their money longer” has never become systematic.

“The encouragement in policies for institutions to develop financial products that are adapted to long-term investment can attract more individual investors to invest for the long term, optimizing the market’s capital structure.” Tian Xuan, a specially appointed professor at Peking University, told reporters. Local policy support helps attract resources such as high-quality investment advisory institutions nationwide, financial technology firms, and professional talent to land on the ground, and promotes communication and cooperation among institutions while driving innovation in business models. This can not only enhance stability in capital markets, but also create more business opportunities for investment advisory institutions and promote healthy development of the buy-side investment advisory market.

Tian Xuan suggests local governments strengthen cross-regional policy coordination. They should cooperate in policy formulation, regulatory standards, investor education, and more, and build a cross-regional mechanism for mutual recognition of investment-advisory institutions’ qualifications. At the same time, encourage investment advisory institutions to increase investment in financial technology, leveraging technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence to improve service efficiency and quality. Also, push local enterprises to establish corporate pension systems, guide social security funds to expand the proportion of equity-based investments, and establish a truly long-lasting mechanism for bringing in long-term funds.

Xiaowen provides a different angle, pushing the position of buy-side investment advisory even deeper—not just a service model, but foundational work to change the structure of residents’ wealth allocation. In her view, when people discuss “long-term money,” they tend to focus on institutions at the asset-liability side such as insurance and social security. But in reality, “the liability side of ‘long-term money’ is household financial assets—household financial assets’ preference structure and time horizon determine the length of long-term money. Except for social security, the liability sides of public mutual funds, bank wealth management, and insurance are actually unstable. Few people see that layer.” She further points out that every ordinary citizen has “long-term money,” namely money for retirement. It’s just that people are currently “short-termizing” their long-term money—storing it for demand deposits and earning interest at the living-rate. Buy-side investment advisory is intended to change ordinary people’s financial-quotient cognition.

A relevant person in charge at Yimifund’s TAMP division introduced that the cooperation between Yimifund and Guoyuan Securities began formally for customers in January 2026. Currently, more than 40 seed investment advisors provide allocation-based services for customers according to the buy-side service process. Customer feedback is that the advisors truly provide investment advice around the customers’ own needs. During the service process, a scientific and rigorous asset allocation plan is presented, along with asset look-through analysis and scenario simulation demonstrations. Customers’ sense of trust and satisfaction with the advisors and the services has improved significantly. For the investment advisor side, by enhancing trust and service efficiency through standardized buy-side service processes, support from tools, and research-and-investment solution support, as well as accompanying the customer throughout the entire process, a good service paradigm is formed to guide customers toward “long-term money and long-term investing.” From the perspective of the holding structure, customers who received service through this process also saw a clear increase in the proportion of equity assets.

“The essence of ‘Anhui’s practice’ is to reshape residents’ financial asset allocation behavior through professional and localized investment-advisory services.” The person in charge above said that practice shows: when advisors can clearly provide matched solutions around customers’ KYC (know your customer), and can present data-based explanations such as parsing of the plan and asset look-through analysis, investors’ acceptance of equity assets and mid-to-long-term allocations can be significantly improved. This behavioral shift—from “short-term trading” to “long-term allocation,” and from “holding single products” to “portfolio-based management”—is exactly the key micro-foundation for guiding short-term savings deposited in residents’ accounts to flow in an orderly way through standardized tools such as public mutual funds and bank wealth management toward technological innovation and the real economy.

Luo Ronghua, dean of the Institute of Financial Development at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, notes that the relevant policies issued by the two local governments have significance not only in advocating “investor-centered” approaches, but also in promoting standardization and transparency of investment advisory service processes. Only by strengthening foundational institutional building such as appropriate suitability management, fee disclosure, performance presentation at the portfolio level, record-keeping for rebalancing and trading, and dispute-handling mechanisms can buy-side investment advisory become a service system that is turned from slogans into something executable, supervisable, and traceable.

Luo Ronghua emphasizes: “Investors’ trust in the capital market is not derived from promotion, but from whether charges are clear, whether strategies are explainable, and whether results are traceable.” If local governments can form a demonstration path in these “perceivable elements,” it may fundamentally improve the structural dilemma of “funds make money but fund holders do not.”

Luo Ronghua suggests that local governments should first form a long-term performance disclosure template at the portfolio level within their jurisdictions—such as indicators including drawdowns over 3-year or 5-year holding periods, volatility, and the time needed to repair maximum drawdown—and gradually link these to institutional assessment mechanisms. Only when “long-term performance” becomes measurable, comparable, and includable in assessments can the buy-side investment advisory model truly take root.

In investor education, Luo Ronghua argues for moving from concept preaching to tool-based and mechanism-based building. Promote target risk portfolios and rebalancing rules, provide scenario simulation and stress-testing displays. By reducing short-term emotional interference through tool-based methods, it helps enhance investors’ real sense of wealth gains.

Long-Term Money Reinvests in Local Economic Development

After flipping the internal logic of financial institutions and changing residents’ investment behavior, the transition of buy-side investment advisory ultimately points to another question: can dispersed savings accumulated in residents’ accounts truly be converted into long-term capital that supports the development of local industries through professional investment advisory services?

Guangzhou’s exploration has already provided a preliminary answer. “The investment advisory business format can meet the growing demand for wealth management, and at the same time provide a stable source of ‘fresh water’ for financing the real economy.” A spokesperson from the Guangzhou Municipal Financial Office said. Promoting the development of the investment advisory business format is an important measure to activate capital markets and bolster investors’ confidence. The investment advisory ecosystem that Guangzhou has built has an important goal: to use the construction of the investment advisory business format to support reforms in capital markets, making it a new growth pole for serving Guangzhou’s economic and social development, and providing strong support for Guangzhou’s modern financial industry system. Since the establishment of Guangzhou Investment Advisory Industry Chain Investment Co., Ltd., 广发德信子基金 and 粤开证券子基金 have already been launched, totaling 219 million yuan in raised funds, and currently focusing on 7 investment projects. This means that through ecosystem building, financial capital has started to take concrete landing points at the industry end.

Anhui’s path is even more direct. Qian Cheng, head of Huian Emerging Advisory, told reporters that the significance of Anhui’s practice at the company and policy level lies in transforming the national top-level policies such as “guiding long-term funds into the market” and “developing index-based investing” into local practice—turning them into an important handle for implementing capital market policies in Anhui, so that policy dividends are transformed into real results at the regional development level. This is a concrete path for buy-side investment advisory services to serve local economic development: not only providing professional allocation services to residents, but also channeling dispersed private savings into long-term equity capital needed by science and technology innovation industries.

The person in charge of the Anhui base of the Guangzhou Investment Advisory College said that the core of this process lies in a coordinated model of “regulatory push—institutional demand—multi-party co-building.” It brings together various forces such as market institutions, industry associations, and professional education, gradually forming consensus on the value of long-term investment. Guiding “long-term money and long-term investing” is by no means a single-point breakthrough project; it requires a system-wide effort that advances through shared理念 consensus, talent cultivation, organizational structure, system building, and knowledge accumulation over years and years.

However, between the formation of “long-term money” and truly reinvesting into local economic development, there is still a gap in institutional distance that must be crossed.

Regarding the current transition, a spokesperson from the Guangzhou Municipal Financial Office admitted candidly that at present, investment advisory business has not fully achieved a smooth transition from pilot programs to regularization. At the institutional level, innovation in service models, the scope of asset allocation, and the participating entities are still constrained by the existing regulatory framework, leading to compression of some business space and difficulty for high-quality resources to be released to their full potential. Talent is another more difficult shortcoming. Currently nationwide there are about 73k securities investment advisors and about 207k bank wealth-management practitioners, but there has not yet been a unified and authoritative industry standard in terms of competency evaluation, training standards, and service理念. Top institutions generally report that the cultivation cycle for investment-advisory talent is long and that complex capabilities are required; lack of uniform standards further constrains the improvement of overall professionalization levels. Guangzhou has already begun exploring the establishment of an investment-advisory grading and certification system, but clearer higher-level institutional arrangements still need to wait for advancement at the national level.

Wu Fei, a professor at Shanghai Advanced Finance Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told reporters that current buy-side investment advisory is still in an early stage, and more problems focus on systemic obstacles: a nationwide unified investment-advisory business code of practice and standards have not yet been established, and institutional interfaces between pension funds, insurance, bank wealth management, and investment advisory have not yet been connected. Investment-advisory service quality evaluation and credit systems also need to be established. The proactive actions of local governments can only fill some gaps; deeper breakthroughs rely on coordinated advancement at the national level.

Tian Lihui, dean of the Institute of Finance and Development at Nankai University, characterizes two dimensions of the buy-side transition as “breaking the ice” and “shaping the soul.” The former breaks existing sales inertia, so that “investor-centered” becomes a regulatory-oriented reality rather than a slogan, providing vivid samples for the national transition. The latter reshapes the industry ecosystem through industrial clustering and system guidance, cultivating the soil of long-termism-compatible capital, services, and talent. She suggests upgrading local rules into industry references, encouraging diversified fee structures based on assets and performance, and changing residents’ financial concepts through localized investment education.

Xu Haining remains vigilant about potential short-term opportunism in the industry. She believes that buy-side investment advisory is a long-term project of “ten years to forge a sword.” While top-level design is important, only long-term practice can form a true “muscle memory.” Because the long-term practice of investment advisory is the “last mile” of serving customers, and investment-advisory practitioners are the executors of serving customers. She said that during this process, we need to pay attention to performance assessment of market institutions in practice—whether it’s “selling sheep’s head and dog meat,” and whether they truly believe and truly do it.

From Guangzhou to Anhui, the landing of buy-side investment advisory in China has already proven it is possible, and the path is already visible. But from regional samples to an industry paradigm, and from policy-driven to self-sustaining operation, there is still a period of real distance in between. The system needs to be further improved, investor education needs continued accumulation, and assessment logic inside institutions must truly be flipped. If anything is missing, the closed loop cannot run. This transition’s endgame has not yet arrived, but whoever first runs the closed loop should be the one able to win the next era of wealth management market first.