Shanghai will go all out to be the front-runner on financial reform and innovation, Shanghai Party Secretary Yu Zhengsheng told the Lujiazui Forum Saturday.

Shanghai embraces advice and suggestions on how to grow better as a global financial center, Yu said.

"Shanghai will keep making initiatives to break through the bottleneck that limits the city's rise in the financial area," he told the Lujiazui Forum, touted as the "Financial Davos."

A better coalition between the financial and high-tech industries, better regulation and a better environment for attracting financial professionals are all on the agenda, he said.

The State Council announced guidelines in early 2009 to make Shanghai a global financial and shipping hub by 2020 and the city is striving to meet the target.

Shanghai boasts 200,000 financial professionals in its population of 20 million.

"But the penetration of financial professionals is still low compared with financial centers in Europe and the US," Tu Guangshao, a deputy Shanghai mayor in charge of the city's financial industry development, told the two-day forum, which ended yesterday.

"We have an even more severe lack of experienced professionals in areas such as finance information technology and finance marketing," he said.

Shanghai has passed rules to attract experienced professionals to base in the city but "the efforts are far from enough," Tu said. He said luring professionals to the city is key for Shanghai's rise as a global financial center.

Tu waved off Shanghai's competition with Hong Kong as a global financial center, citing China's large-scale economy as enough to accommodate the rise of both cities.

In the past year, much progress has been made to put Shanghai in the forefront to pilot financial innovation programs, such as the cross-border trade yuan settlement.

The program, launched in Shanghai and four Guangdong Province cities, have been expanded nationwide.

Shanghai has also gained regulatory approval to introduce a trade credit market in the city.

The market, to better allocate credit resources, will be launched soon, Tu said.

Other innovations being planned include an insurance exchange to shore up the financial protection segment.