GIFT City climbs nine places to 37th in Global Financial Centres Index

GIFT City, India's Global Finance-Tec hub, has advanced nine places to rank 37th globally in the 40th edition of the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI 40), compared with 46th in GFCI 39.

The latest ranking also places GIFT City among the top 15 financial centres in the Asia-Pacific region, making it the only Indian centre in this group.

GIFT City has also improved its position in the GFCI FinTech ranking, moving up three places to 26th globally from 29th in GFCI 39.

The GFCI report assesses 115 financial centres on their FinTech offering. It identifies an innovation-supporting ecosystem, access to finance, skilled talent, the regulatory environment and ICT infrastructure as important elements of a competitive FinTech centre.

GFCI 40 also features GIFT City among the 15 centres that respondents expect to become more significant over the next two to three years, based on mentions in the GFCI survey.

The improvement in GIFT City's overall and FinTech rankings comes amid the continued expansion of its financial services ecosystem and closer integration of finance, technology and innovation.

GIFT City said it will continue to focus on deepening market participation, strengthening international connectivity and building capabilities to support increasingly sophisticated cross-border financial activity.

The report identifies digital infrastructure, including cloud services, data connectivity and cybersecurity resilience, as priority areas for financial centres over the next five years. It also highlights the attraction of FinTech and digital asset businesses, stronger anti-money laundering and financial crime frameworks, and deeper capital markets.

The Global Financial Centres Index combines assessments from financial-sector respondents with quantitative instrumental factors. GFCI 40 draws on 144 instrumental factors and 39,531 assessments from 6,147 respondents to the GFCI online questionnaire.