Global financial market data provider Refinitiv has said the rapid growth of China's financial services industry and the global demand for Chinese market data are providing more opportunities for data industry players.

The Chinese government has continued accelerating the opening-up of its financial market industry despite the COVID-19 pandemic, said Refinitiv China head Nicole Chen.

"This is a very, very exciting trend for our [the Chinese] government to accelerate the opening-up," she said. "In recent weeks, we have seen that BlackRock has got the license of the mutual funds and Citi has got the other first custodian banking license. And we have seen that a lot of the U.S. companies as well as the European companies have expanded their business in China."

Refinitiv, one of the world's largest providers of financial market data and infrastructure, was founded in 2018 after Thomson Reuters sold a majority stake of its Financial and Risk business to private equity funds managed by Blackstone. The company serves more than 40,000 institutions in approximately 190 countries and is seen as a rival to Bloomberg.

"As a data company, we have seen the demand from the foreign banks for Chinese market data has increased significantly. This is the good business opportunity for Refinitiv," she said.

Chen added that the global pandemic has forced numerous banks and companies to switch their business operations from offline to online, and digital transformation has become the top priority for companies across different industries.

"Financial institutions' demands for the data have changed significantly," Chen said, adding that the firm has seen a significant increase in demand for real time and accurate data compared to 2019.

(Michael Wang contributed to the story.)