With people queuing up for food, a canteen in Shanghai's Lujiazui financial district is experiencing the buzz it used to have at lunch time before the pandemic hit.

Among those taking a lunch break is Xia Menxin, a wealth manager at Singaporean DBS Bank. Xia said daily work routine has returned to what it was before the COVID-19 outbreak.

"Our working hours are from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Other than virus control measures at work, there hasn't been much impact on our business," Xia said.

Crowds in Shanghai's financial district are proof that confidence is returning to Shanghai's financial firms and their staff as China continues to see the fruitful results of its efforts against the pandemic.

The virus may have disrupted routines before, but many of the city's financial experts are now back to work, and business may be even better than before.

About 370,000 people in Shanghai work in the financial sector. And with the pandemic under control, these 370,000 people are back to their positions exploring emerging opportunities.

Financial firms see renewed business growth

Xia said the pandemic might have brought some uncertainty to her life previously, but in recent months she's finding even more business. "There are more clients now. As a foreign bank, we've even benefited from the pandemic because many foreign clients are staying in China and giving more attention to managing their money."

Xia is among the 2,000 personnel at DBS Bank China who have now all returned to work. The return to normalcy at big banks has also boosted the confidence of their smaller brothers and sisters.

Feng Meiyun runs a small firm in Shanghai's Minhang District, providing financial data to corporate and individual investors. She was quite worried when the virus was spreading in its early stages, but her company's business is now up by more than 60 percent from over a year ago. She had to put employees on overtime, and has even hired six new staffers.

"At that time, we wondered if we could endure, but things have turned out fine. We had some projects going from last year and the government has been supporting the financial industry. We were basically working overtime in May and June to finish several projects," said Feng Meiyun, general manager at Shanghai Jinrong Info Tech.

Shanghai has leapt to the third place in the ranking of global financial centers, after only New York and London, in the latest report by British financial think tank Z/Yen. And with foreign financial markets still dealing with the virus, Shanghai's money makers are finding their opportunities growing even faster than before.