The Chinese Finance Research Institute of SWUFE (CFRI) was established in Feb. 2000 in the way of cooperating with the Finance Research Bureau of People’s Bank of China. Its origin can be traced back to Finance Research Institute of SWUFE established in1986. There are many prominent experts and scholars in SWUFE as well as scholars in other universities and financial institutes participated in important theoretical and practical research on the reform and development of finance in China.
CFRI aims at giving full play to the advantage of finance subject in SWUFE, accelerating the reform of distribution system, and trying to become the model base for the reform of teaching and research.
The goal of CFRI is to make as a leading financial research institute with strong and comprehensive research abilities. It will be built up as five bases in the field of financial service in china and two depository pools: research base of finance, training base of experts in finance, information base of academic exchange of national finance education, consulting base of finance and the model base of the reform of teaching and research systems; the pool of thought in finance and the pool of professionals.
西南財經大學中國金融研究中心（以下簡稱中心）是按照教育部《普通高等學校人文社會科學重點基地建設計畫》、貫徹高校科研機構改革的精神、採取與中國人民銀行金融研究所合作建設、合作研究的方式、於２０００年２月組建成立的具有新型機制的實體性科研機構，其前身為成立於１９８６年的西南財經大學金融研究所，２０００年９月正式列為教育部人文社會科學百所重點研究基地之一，是國內唯一的以中國冠名的國家級金融研究機構。中心以西南財經大學金融學科的研究力量為主，邀請國內外大專院校、科研院所和知名金融機構的著名專家學者，共同研究中國金融改革與發展中面臨的重大理論和實踐問題。
