SINGAPORE - A series of nine memorandums of understanding were signed by Singapore and Shanghai financial institutions on Tuesday (Apr 12) to deepen bilateral cooperation.

These included a MOU between the Singapore Exchange and the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPDB) to help raise the bourse's profile as a fundraising platform for Chinese firms.

OCBC inked two agreements, one with the Bank of Shanghai to collaborate to enhance services for mutual clients, and another with the SIIC Trade Group to be the state-owned enterprise's main banking partner.

Other deals will see UOB support Shanghai construction firm SUCG International Engineering in regional expansion, and bring Singapore fintech firm Nufin Data to enter China.

These MOUs were signed at the third Singapore-Shanghai Financial Forum, held at the Marina Mandarin hotel.

Both cities are important financial centres with plenty of opportunities to learn and cooperate, speakers at the forum agreed.

Ms Jacqueline Loh, Monetary Authority of Singapore's deputy managing director, hoped that Singapore and Shanghai can explore co-creating financial services tools to facilitate greater capital flow into China as the country works on market liberalisation.

Singapore asset management firm NN Investment Partners chief executive Gopi Mirchandani said she's eyeing Shanghai as the company's next hub. But she noted that the control of capital outflow can be further loosened to allow foreign asset managers to better serve domestic investors.

Meanwhile, the SPDB president Liu Xinyi said his bank - which opened its Singapore branch late last month - hopes to leverage Singapore as the platform to bring Chinese investors and companies to go overseas. The bank is China's seventh largest.