Guangdong University of Finance is a provincial public ordinary undergraduate college and the only finance-oriented university in South China. The school was founded by the People's Bank of China in 1950 and is an institution with a "central bank gene".

The educational level of the school has been continuously improved and its scale has been continuously expanded. In 2004, it was upgraded from a "junior college" to a "bachelor's degree". Since 2012, it has been the only pilot unit for professional master's degree training in special needs projects in Guangdong Province to recruit master's degree students in finance. Since 2014, it has been recruiting international students. In 2016, it jointly recruited doctoral students with the University of Nottingham in the UK and the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. In 2021, the school was successfully approved as a master's degree authorization unit, adding three professional master's degree authorization points in finance, insurance and accounting. In 2024, the school was approved as a project construction unit for the awarding of doctoral degrees. It added a first-level discipline master's degree authorization point in applied economics and eight new professional master's degree authorization points in applied statistics, asset evaluation, auditing, law, international business, business administration, translation, and digital economy.