A Critical Review of Existing Financial Center Indices

International financial centers are pivotal nodes in the global financial system, concentrating capital, talent, and institutional capacity. For a long time, there have been efforts to quantify the strength and competitiveness of financial centers. In the first part of this series, we take a look at existing financial center indices; in the second part, we will dive deeper into what strength and competitiveness mean and discuss the impact of financial centers.

Various indices attempt to measure and rank their impact and competitiveness, yet each reflects different theoretical assumptions, data sources, and methodological choices. This report provides a comprehensive and critical review of the major principal financial center indices — the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI), the Open Financial Ecosystem Index (OFEX), the Global Power City Index Financial Centers (GPCI-FC), the newly launched Financial Center Competitiveness Index (FCCI) of NYU Abu Dhabi, the New Financial International Financial Centres Index, and the EU Financial Centres Power Index. For each, we assess its history, methodology, coverage, strengths, and weaknesses, and present its latest top-20 rankings where available. We supplement them with analyses of a few additional indices: the discontinued Financial Command Index and Xinhua-Dow Jones International Financial Centers Development Index, the CEOWorld Magazine International Financial Centers Index, and the IMD World Competitiveness Ranking.

We compare rankings across indices to identify consistently high-performing centers and notable outliers. Each index is assigned a score from 0 to 10 reflecting how well it captures financial center performance, impact, and usefulness for policy and investment decisions.

Finally, drawing on insights from members of the World Alliance of International Financial Centers and the academic field of financial geography, we propose a blueprint for a next-generation financial center index that combines the best features of existing measures while addressing key methodological gaps — including the inadequate treatment of green finance, digital finance, city boundary definitions, and emerging market financial centers.