By
Mike Wardle, Professor Michael Mainelli
Published by IFC Review (January 2023)
In 2007, GFCI 1 provided ratings for 46 financial centres, including just two IFCs – Cayman Islands and Bermuda. GFCI 32, published in September 2022, provides ratings for 119 financial centres worldwide, including all the major IFCs. This increase reflects the continuing development of the world economy and in particular trade expansion, with trade as a percentage of global GDP, thus taking population growth into account, rising from 27 per cent in 1970 to 60 per cent in 2019, an increase of 33 percentage points over the past half century. This has driven the demand for cross-border transactions, investment, and insurance, and the facilities to manage these services.