Financial inclusion is a crucial link in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Strengthening the capability of financial institutions to provide inclusive financial services can help to narrow the inequality gap and increase access to opportunities. Digitalization, with its competitive advantages and rapid growth, may be a powerful tool to foster financial inclusion and sustainable development. This paper examines the effects of bank digitalization on sustainable financial inclusion and explores two underlying incentive mechanisms in banks: profit driven and risk aversion. We construct a basic model and a mechanism model and exploit a nonlinear attempt, heterogeneous estimation as well as supplementary variable and instrument variable methods for a robustness test. The results of the basic model demonstrate that bank digitalization has significant positive effects on financial inclusion and the current financial inclusive effects are sustainable. The mechanism models designed as the mediation effect panel model suggest that digitalization enables banks to expand the business probability frontier of profit-driven behavior and pursuit of credit portfolio diversity in risk aversion behavior, thereby promoting sustainable financial inclusion. As a result of digitalization, vulnerable groups can benefit from sustainable financial inclusion, while financial inclusion feeds back into banks’ sustainable development. This paper conforms to the trend of the development of digitalization and provides theoretical and empirical support for banks to build digitalization and realize sustainable financial inclusion, which contributes to the “triple-win” financial ecology for improving banks’ performance, increasing the rights of vulnerable groups and promoting sustainable development throughout society.

For sustainable economic development, it is extremely important to understand how digital finance and technological innovation are coupled and how the spatial coupling network is connected. Based on panel data collected from 31 Chinese provinces between 2011 and 2020, this paper calculates the technological innovation index using the entropy method, and adopts the coupling coordination model to measure the coupling coordination degree of digital finance and technological innovation. Furthermore, this paper utilizes the improved gravity model to determine the spatial correlation matrix and uses the social network analysis (SNA) method to investigate the spatial spillover characteristics of the coupling network. The results demonstrate the following: (1) While the index of digital finance and technological innovation rose and digital finance developed rapidly, the level of technological innovation remained low. (2) There was an improvement in the degree of coupling coordination between digital finance and technological innovation, which was higher in the eastern region and lower in the west. (3) The overall network density and the number of associations increased; meanwhile, the network hierarchy and network efficiency declined, indicating that the spatial structure was strengthened. (4) The centrality of some developed eastern regions, such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhejiang, was greater than that of some underdeveloped areas in the midwest and northeast regions. (5) The coupling coordination network can be classified into four types: the “main inflow plate” mainly includes underdeveloped regions in the midwest areas; the “main outflow plate” and “bidirectional spillover plate” primarily include the developed eastern areas; and the “agent plate” mainly includes the central provinces. This research provides a foundation for enhancing the cross-regional coupling coordinated development of digital finance and technological innovation.

Fin-tech has promoted the development of robo-advisor and subverted people’s perception of the traditional financial industry. The robo-advisor platform uses a combination of investment algorithms to provide customers with suggestions to enable non-professional investors to enter the financial network. However, issues such as identification of customer needs, single investment advisory products, and regulatory risks hinder the development of China’s robo-advisor to a certain extent. Based on the analysis of robo-advisor theory, technical basis, development status and existing problems, this article puts forward feasible suggestions for the development of robo-advisor and helps the rapid development of robo-advisors in China’s financial market.

The application of big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, block-chain, and other technologies has enabled financial services to be closely integrated into daily production and life, and scenario finance has developed rapidly. Starting from the application scenarios of smart scenario finance, the research found that in the development of smart scenario finance, Internet finance companies rely on their accumulated resource advantages to establish the leading position, and commercial banks also adopt various forms such as self-built scenarios, shared scenarios, and integration scenarios to explore the construction of smart scenario finance, which improved the efficiency and quality of financial services of commercial banks, and promoted the business transformation of commercial banks. At the same time, there are also many problems and difficulties in the construction of smart scenario finance. Commercial banks should seize the opportunity and take advantage of financial technology to provide customers with financial services based on specific scenarios, and promote the construction of smart scenario finance.