Abstract: The financial mismatch existing in China’s financial system will theoretically promote enterprises to increase financial investment through portfolio selection. This paper conducts anempirical research based on the data of non-financial listed companies in China from 2007 to 2019. The findings show that financial mismatch has significantly promoted the financialization of enterprises in general, and that it mainly promotes the investment in long-term financial assets and quasi financial assets. The former is more prominent in the enterprises with strong profitability, while the latter is only significant in the enterprises with weak profitability and in the state-owned enterprises. The result of the mechanism test shows that financial mismatch promotes enterprise financialization by improving financing constraints and expanding the income gap between finance and entities, but this impact on different types of financial assets shows heterogeneous motivation. For example, under the influence of financial mismatch, enterprises will increase investment in long-term financial assets, which is out of the motive of“preventing savings”to ease financing constraints and the motive of active“profit seeking”to obtain excess financial returns, while increasing the allocation of quasi-financial assets is only out of the passive“profit seeking”motive forced by the decline of the return on the investment in the main business. Further inspection reveals that the relaxation of interest rate control and the development of digital inclusive finance can both weaken the enterprise financialization under the effect of financial mismatch, but mainly weaken the allocation of the quasi-financial assets. In the future, it is necessary for the relevant departments to further promote the marketization of the financial system, improve the efficiency of financial resource allocation, and guide finance to return to the real economy.It is also necessary to promote the development of digital inclusive finance and the construction of the multi-level and full chain capital markets, promote the accurate implementation of financial services, and adapt to the high-quality economic development.

Key words: financial mismatch, enterprise financialization, digital inclusive finance, types offinancial assets, motivation heterogeneity