Date: December 19, 2025
Venue: The 22nd China International Finance Forum (CIFF), Shanghai, China
Speaker: Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer Mr. Roman Serov
Building an Intelligent Financial Ecosystem in the Digital Economy Era
Distinguished guests, colleagues, friends,
It is a great pleasure to join you at the 22nd China International Finance Forum—an event that continues to serve as a vital connection between vision and action in global finance.
Today, I speak on behalf of the New Development Bank (NDB), a multilateral financial institution for emerging economies established by the BRICS. Dedicated to providing financing to support infrastructure and sustainable development in member countries, NDB is committed to addressing the gaps left by traditional international financial institutions and enhancing the global development finance system toward the Global South. NDB’s projects not only support member countries’ development priorities in sustainable infrastructure but also exemplify innovations in the respective sectors, facilitate their digital transformation, and provide access to innovative technologies for developing countries.
In its first 10 years, NDB has approved over 130 projects totaling USD 42 billion, with local currency denominated loans accounting for 25% of the total, demonstrating our commitment to supporting local currency financing and promoting a more balanced and resilient monetary system.
More than 50% of the loan amount has been disbursed through projects. These funds have been consistently channeled into infrastructure development across NDB’s strategic areas of operation like Digital Infrastructure, Clean Energy & Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Transport Infrastructure. These foundational investments are not only advancing physical and institutional capacity but are also dedicatedly designed with the emphasis on digitalization and intelligent systems—integrating smart grids, AI-enabled management platforms, IoT-based monitoring, and data-driven decision making to ensure efficiency and long-term sustainability. Above all, it means ensuring that the benefits of digital transformation reach those who need them most.
My message is simple yet urgent: In the digital economy era, development banking must be intelligent and deeply rooted in the realities of the Global South. Please allow me to illustrate this through some landmark projects recently approved by NDB that perfectly reflect our mission and resonate with today’s forum theme.
The Brazil Smart Hospital Project.
This is more than a comprehensive hospital—it is a national pilot for the future of public healthcare in emerging economies. Located within São Paulo’s historic Hospital das Clínicas, this 120,000-square-meter facility will integrate emergency care, neurology, and intensive treatment with a fully digital backbone: AI-driven scheduling, electronic health records, telemedicine platforms, clinical decision support systems, and a national center for translational research and innovation. By the project completion, the hospital is targeted to increase annual patient treatment volumes in these designated areas from 160,000 to 280,000 annually, indicating an expansion of over 70%.
Critically, this project does not just import foreign models—it adapts advanced technologies to Brazil’s Unified Health System. By training local health professionals in advanced digital tools and designing scalable systems, NDB is helping Brazil ease inefficiencies and long wait times that have plagued public healthcare for decades. Moreover, this focus on AI and intelligent applications makes the model highly transferable, offering a practical template that other NDB member countries can adopt and tailor to their own contexts, with NDB’s support in technical assistance, financing, and value additions.
This also exemplifies how multilateral development bank (MDB) can empower an intelligent ecosystem—using digital finance to transform physical infrastructure into smart, inclusive, and responsive public services.
The National Investment and Infrastructure Fund in India.
NDB has approved this year an equally transformative USD 100 million equity investment in India’s Private Markets Fund II (NIIF-II), co-financing with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Development Bank of Japan.
NIIF-II will mobilize nearly USD 1 billion to invest in venture capital and growth funds focused on three priority sectors—including digital and tech-enabled infrastructure, energy transition and climate action, and urban and social infrastructure. Through this fund-of-funds model, NDB is helping channel long-term capital into early-stage innovators who are building India’s—and by extension, the Global South’s—digital future. This is an intelligent financial ecosystem in action: using blended finance to de-risk innovation, deepen capital markets, and accelerate the deployment of digital solutions.
I would like to highlight that NDB’s investments in China consistently advance digital transformation by embedding smart data platforms into core infrastructure.
- In Ningxia, the Yinchuan Bus Project established an Intelligent Transport Management System featuring real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and a centralized transport data center to integrate vehicle and pedestrian traffic into the smart city ecosystem.
- Similarly, Huangshi Tram in Hubei introduced the city’s first intelligent traffic network, using real-time surveillance and AI-driven flow optimization to boost efficiency and cut emissions.
- In Qingdao, Metro Line 6 leverages a cloud-based Intelligent Subway Operations System, integrating big data, video analytics, and IoT sensors across construction, operation, and maintenance—setting a national benchmark for “smart metro” development.
- Most recently, the Taiyuan Zero-Carbon Airport project features an Intelligent Energy and Carbon Management Platform that monitors real-time carbon emissions and tracks on-site renewable generation from photovoltaic and geothermal systems, alongside energy consumption patterns.
These unique projects together demonstrate a core truth, from the MDB perspective: the digital economy is not just about fintech or e-commerce. It is about reengineering essential public services through intelligent systems.
We recognize that no single institution can drive systemic change alone. Over 30% of the total NDB projects are co-financed loans, where every $1 invest from NDB attracts $0.5 from other MDB and Development Financial Institutions including national development banks, fintech innovators, and MDBs like ADB, AIIB and the World Bank Group—to scale blended finance models.
As we look ahead, the digital economy will only grow more central to development. But without deliberate design, it risks deepening inequality. That is why MDBs like ours must not only fund infrastructure, but provide efficient and intelligent financial services—designed to enhance public welfare, drive inclusive growth, and ensure that the benefits of modern infrastructure reach every community.
In closing, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government for continued support of NDB and for making Shanghai our home. I look forward to the fruitful discussions ahead.