Founded in 1952, Shanghai Finance University (SFU) with more than 60 years’ history is a full-time public academic institution, which focuses on training talents in finance and economic management. In 2000, instead of being affiliated to the People’s Bank of China, SFU was subject to the dual administration of the Shanghai Municipal Government and the People’s Bank of China (the Central Bank of China) with the former taking the main role.  At present, SFU has formed a distinctive structure with finance as the core subject and economics and management as key subjects while supported by other subjects. SFU is the first and the only university that is named after finance in the Yangtze River Delta. Over the past 60 plus years, SFU has trained a large number of financial talents, many of whom have become senior financial executives. Thus, SFU is praised as a "Cradle of Future Financial Experts".

The main campus of SFU is located at No. 995, Shangchuan Road, Pudong New District. It has an occupied area of more than 450,000 square meters and a constructive area of 250,000 square meters. The university has its cultural and physical facilities, like Fencing Center, Painting and Calligraphy Museum, and Modern Coins Museum; experimental institutions, like the Simulation Bank, Simulation Insurance Company, and Simulation Stock Exchange Company, as well as Moot Court, Moot Arbitral Tribunal and Undergraduates Innovation and Entrepreneurship Zone. At present, there are more than 8,000 full-time students, over 600 international students and more than 3000 students of adult education at SFU. Also, the university provides professional finance training close to 50,000 persons annually.

The university focuses on fostering “Academically Advanced, Application-Based, and Internationally-Oriented” faculty members.  SFU has 685 faculty members, among whom 445 are full-time teachers. Among the full-time teachers, 226 have senior professional titles, almost one third have overseas academic experience, and nearly one fourth have teaching experience or background in industry.

SFU has 13 teaching faculties, which are the School of International Finance, School of International Economics and Trade, School of Accounting, School of Insurance, School of Finance and Public Administration, School of Business Administration, School of Information Management, Department of Applied Mathematics, Department of Foreign Languages, Department of Law, Department of Humanities and Arts, Department of Social Sciences and Department of Physical Education. Additionally, it has 4 professional schools - the Sino-Danish College, School of International Exchange, School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and School of Continuing Education - which focus on international exchange and cooperation, international students’ education, innovation and entrepreneurial education, continuing education, and vocational education and training.

The university offers 25 undergraduate programs, such as Finance, Insurance, Accounting and International Trade, and 4 diploma programs, such as Marketing and Art Design. All of these majors cover seven academic fields, including Economics, Law, Literature, Science, Engineering, Management, and Arts. At present, SFU has two national level featured majors of Finance and Accounting; and three Shanghai municipal-level featured majors, such as Public Finance. Meanwhile, SFU has built about 20 extractive courses both at national level and the Shanghai municipal-level. There are three Shanghai municipal-level outstanding teaching teams (they are International Finance, Financial Planning, and Public Finance), and one Shanghai municipal level undergraduate innovation and entrepreneurship demonstration base. With ICBC, the cooperation base that SFU built was named as a national level industry-university-research base.

SFU has adopted a global vision to run the university. It has established a cooperative relationship with more than 30 universities and institutions in different regions and foreign countries, such as Denmark, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, Finland, Switzerland, Japan, Vietnam, Kenya, Hungry, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao. Nowadays, SFU has 25 Sino-foreign exchange programs, 2 Sino-foreign cooperative educational programs, with more than 600 enrolled students of these programs. There are 4 majors taught in English, which are International Finance, International Accounting, International Economics and Trade and International Business Management. The number of international students has reached over 600.  In addition, SFU has overseas teaching bases in Japan, Korea, Kenya and Vietnam, and runs 2+2 dual degree programs in Kenya and Vietnam.

The university is also research focused. It has set up several research institutions with emphases on policy-making consulting and applied academic research for the international financial center construction program of Shanghai City and higher educational practice. The research institutions are Sci-Tech Finance Institute of Shanghai, International Finance Research Institute, China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone Research Institute and Higher Education Research Institute. Collaborating with the Shanghai Municipal Government, SFU has also built up the research base of Shanghai International Finance Center Construction, which has become a think tank of the local government.

SFU has a strong atmosphere in arts, sports and culture. Fencing is the featured sport of the university, and the SFU fencing team has achieved impressive results in different kinds of international competitions and won gold and silver medals for the glory of the nation. With SFU’s traditional Calligraphy, the university has become the only calligraphy training base among universities and colleges in Shanghai.

Under the university motto “Display honesty and cultivate virtue, foster ambition and contribute to society”, and following the strategy of “Industry-driven, global oriented and technology-based strategy”, SFU is playing its role in the national strategy of building Shanghai into an international financial center.