Abu Dhabi has released its first comprehensive global index to measure the competitiveness of international financial centres using data and a future-orientated methodology.
The Stern School of Business at NYU Abu Dhabi unveiled the inaugural Financial Centre Competitiveness Index (FCCI) during the Global Markets Summit at Abu Dhabi Finance Week (ADFW) on Tuesday.
New York, London and Singapore rank as the world’s leading financial centres, while cities in the Gulf are emerging rapidly as competitive global players, the FCCI found. Abu Dhabi leads the Middle East after taking 12th spot, after Zurich, Beijing and San Francisco. Dubai is 14th on the list, followed by Riyadh in 26th and Doha in 29th.
The FCCI has been released by the newly established Institute for Global Financial Competitiveness at NYU Stern Abu Dhabi, supported by Ray Dalio, American billionaire and co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates.
New measures of competitiveness
The FCCI's structure represents a major conceptual shift compared with other global indexes, according to one of its creators.
Traditional rankings tend to reward size history and market value, said Bruno Lanvin, president of the Descartes Institute for the Future, which is leading the project. They give less weight to forward-looking elements such as innovation, talent mobility, technology readiness and regulatory adaptability – key attributes of future leaders.
“We were very interested in identifying the signals that might tell us who would be the big players tomorrow,” Mr Lanvin, who has spent 25 years leading the creation of global benchmarks, told The National.
This was also a consistent request from the financial community, he added. The index uses two umbrella categories: "footprint" measures the current strength of a financial centre and "dynamics" determines its rate of evolution.
For example, a city such as New York maintains a dominant footprint due to its immense market depth and institutional concentration. Yet cities that score highly for dynamics, such as Singapore, Seoul and San Francisco, demonstrate significant future readiness that could lift their global standing in the years ahead. This is what governments and institutions need to know, Mr Lanvin said.
This is necessary because the world has entered what he described as a "Vuca" environment, one of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. “The challenges that financial centres will face in one year, in three years, in five years, can be very different from what we see today,” he said, referring to the rapid growth of artificial intelligence and quantum computing this year. “Financial centres must therefore prepare for disruptions that have not yet materialised.”
Talent is among the most important indicators of this readiness, said Mr Lanvin. Hard skills in terms of industry knowledge, as well soft skills, were key, he added.
He said that "inside financial centres, you need people who understand what their clients want", rather than simply having workers in financial services. The FCCI evaluates educational foundations, the presence of major universities, regulatory talent and the ability of a centre to attract global expertise, he added.
"The ability to not only grow but also attract and even more importantly, to retain talent, is critically important for future competitiveness," he said.
This holistic definition of talent is one of the reasons the FCCI diverges from existing rankings, he added.
The index also offers an interactive online tool. It allows policymakers, investors, asset managers and analysts to simulate scenarios by adjusting the weight of various indicators. They can model how rankings would change if talent became twice as important, or if regulatory quality outweighed technology infrastructure, or if innovation capacity mattered more than market size.
Current rankings
Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI)
The GFCI is the most widely recognised ranking of global financial centres. It combines quantitative data with survey-based assessments from industry professionals.
While it provides broad insight into perceptions of competitiveness, it differs from the FCCI in two key ways, Mr Lanvin said. Firstly, it does not provide a future-oriented dynamics pillar. Secondly, the GFCI relies heavily on sentiment-based inputs that can fluctuate with market cycles, geopolitical events such as elections and varied opinions.
He gave an example of his home country of France. “Whether you start any question in the survey, do you think that the government is doing a good job at … you cannot finish your question, the answer is no. So you have a number of cultural tendencies that may also influence the way answers are given to surveys. That’s what we call subjectivity," he said, calling for more reliable sources.
"Hard data needs to be collected, verified, harmonised and calibrated. Hard data is hard work. It also takes more time.”
Centres including Hong Kong, Frankfurt and Amsterdam perform relatively better in the GFCI due to their active capital markets and international financial links.
Cities with strong structural foundations but less global market depth such as Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Abu Dhabi and Dubai ranked notably higher in the FCCI. Middle Eastern financial centres score significantly better in the FCCI due to strong institutional environments and rapid future-readiness improvements.
IMD World Competitiveness Ranking
The International Institute for Management Development (IMD) ranking evaluates national competitiveness through economic performance, government and business efficiency, and infrastructure. It focuses on how effectively a country supports enterprise and productivity rather than on evaluating individual financial centres.
Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI)
The GTCI measures a country’s ability to grow, attract and retain talent. It is distinct because it assesses human capital development rather than broader economic or financial system characteristics.
Global Innovation Index (GII)
The GII ranks economies by the strength of their innovation ecosystems, including research capability, technological output and knowledge creation. It differs from the GCI and IMD by concentrating specifically on creative capacity and scientific progress rather than general economic competitiveness.
Abu Dhabi and Dubai
Mr Lanvin stressed that the FCCI should not be interpreted as a competition between cities and that pitting centres against one another, such as Abu Dhabi versus Dubai, misses the purpose of the index.
He explained the rankings reflect different development paths, rather than winners and losers. “How come Abu Dhabi is ahead of Dubai? Numbers are relative, whether it's number 12 [Abu Dhabi] or number 14 [Dubai], frankly, doesn't have much meaning,” he said. “What is the big difference between the two? The answer is ... there is no big difference. There are different signs that tell us that different paths have been chosen, different tools are available."
The overall understanding of how financial centres function as “a tool for action” is all that matters, he added.
