By Xinmei Shen

Copyright scmp

Yunfeng Financial Group, a fintech company backed by Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma, has hired a former senior executive at Ant Group, which signalled a sharpened commitment to Web3 businesses.
Geoff Jiang Guofei – former president at Ant Digital Technology Business Group, responsible for leading the fintech giant’s blockchain project – now serves as the “chairman of the Web3 Development Committee” at Hong Kong-listed Yunfeng, according to a fact sheet for investors published on the firm’s website. Ant is an affiliate of Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post.
The Yunfeng document described Jiang as one of three key figures representing the company’s “powerful Web3 genes and talent pool”. The two other figures are Xiao Feng, chairman and CEO at HashKey Group, and Fosun International co-founder Liang Xinjun, who both serve as independent non-executive directors at Yunfeng.
After joining Ant in 2017, Jiang became a key figure behind the company’s launch of Trusple, a blockchain-backed smart contract platform for cross-border trade. Jiang, who also served as head of Damo Academy’s Fintech Labs, left Ant in 2024 to work as the chief scientist at state-owned China Electronics.
His appointment at Yunfeng reflects the company’s push into what it called “frontier areas”, such as Web3, that would “solve many pain points” in traditional finance including cost, efficiency, geography and security. Web3 is a term used loosely to refer to applications based on decentralised technologies such as blockchain.

Yunfeng had spent US$44 million to acquire 10,000 ether for its “strategic reserve”, which the company said will provide “key infrastructure support” for tokenised real-world asset (RWA) projects. Yunfeng this month also entered into a partnership with Ant Digital Technologies, an affiliate of Ant.
In a statement on Wednesday, Yunfeng said its blockchain team had “independently completed” the company’s first RWA project, which tokenised shares of a fund of funds (FOF) invested by a wholly owned subsidiary. An FOF is an investment fund that pools investors’ money to buy shares in other funds.
That FOF is focused on alternative assets, with direct and indirect exposure to credit and real estate-related debt securities. Issuing tokens based on part of the FOF’s investments gives investors greater transparency, according to Yunfeng.
The company, which did not identify the subsidiary involved with that fund, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Yunfeng plans to use its initial tokenised RWA project as a basis for exploring more tokenisation solutions for other asset classes, according to its statement.
Headquartered in Hong Kong, Yunfeng is a subsidiary of Cayman Islands-incorporated Yunfeng Financial Holdings, which is owned 70.15 per cent by Yunfeng group chairman Yu Feng and 29.85 per cent by Alibaba’s Ma. The firm’s name combines the Chinese given names of its two founders.
The company derives most of its revenue from its insurance business, which totalled nearly HK$2.8 billion (US$359 million) last year. Its other services include securities brokerage and asset management.
Since announcing its foray into Web3, Yunfeng has become one of the best-performing stocks in Hong Kong. Its share price doubled in the past month and gained 400 per cent over the past six months.
Yunfeng’s shares closed 5.25 per cent lower at HK$5.78 on Thursday.