Measuring competition between financial centres

Three markets in one

A financial centre competes in at least three markets at once. The first is the market for residence, in which states and cities offer wealthy individuals a tax regime, a legal order, security and a way of life. The second is the market for booking, in which banks and asset managers in different jurisdictions compete to hold and manage assets. The third is the market for professionals, in which centres compete for bankers, lawyers, trustees, compliance officers and analysts. The three markets are connected but they do not coincide. A family can live in Milan, book its liquid assets in Lugano, keep its holding company in Luxembourg and employ a family office in London, each choice made under different rules. When observers describe Milan or Dubai as a "competitor" of Lugano, they usually mean one of these markets without saying which.

For a regional centre such as Lugano the distinction matters more than for Zurich or Geneva. Lugano's historical strength lay in booking: it held the assets of Italian families who continued to live in Italy. Its weakness has long been that it could not offer those families a full service in Italy itself, because Italian and European law reserve most services to Italian residents for firms authorized in Italy, as Chapter E.IV has shown. Residence in Ticino solved that problem for those who moved, which is why the canton's lump-sum taxation and its quality of life have become part of the financial centre's offer. The professional market, finally, is shaped by the cross-border labour market described in Chapter H.I, which allows Ticino's banks to recruit in Lombardy at wages below those of Zurich.

The Global Financial Centres Index

The most widely quoted instrument of comparison is the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI), published twice a year by the London think tank Z/Yen with the China Development Institute in Shenzhen. Chapter E.I has described its method and the positions of the Swiss centres in March 2024. The thirty-ninth edition, published on 26 March 2026, rated 120 centres. New York, London, Hong Kong and Singapore led the index, with only one rating point between each of the four. Dubai and Tokyo entered the top ten.¹ Among the centres considered in this chapter, Dubai ranked seventh with 742 points, Zurich eleventh with 738, Luxembourg sixteenth with 733, Geneva eighteenth with 731 and Abu Dhabi twenty-first with 728. Lugano ranked twenty-fifth with 724 points, up from thirtieth place in the previous edition of September 2025. Milan was forty-fifth with 704 points, Monaco eighty-third with 666 and Liechtenstein ninetieth with 659.²

Centre GFCI 39 Rating GFCI 38 rank rank London 2 766 2 Singapore 4 764 4 Dubai 7 742 11 Zurich 11 738 16 Luxembourg 16 733 19 Geneva 18 731 14 Abu Dhabi 21 728 28 Lugano 25 724 30 Milan 45 704 41 Monaco 83 666 78 Liechtenstein 90 659 77

Table 1: Selected centres in the Global Financial Centres Index 39 (March 2026) and 38 (September 2025). Source: Z/Yen and China Development Institute.³

The table invites two readings. On the first, Lugano is a centre of international rank that stands ahead of Milan, Monaco and Liechtenstein and within fourteen points of Zurich. On the second, the index measures the perceptions of a self-selected group of survey respondents together with a set of statistical indicators, and the ratings of midsized centres move by twenty or thirty places from one edition to the next. Between GFCI 38 and GFCI 39 almost all centres outside the top four lost rating points, among them Geneva, which fell by fourteen points and four places, while Lugano lost five points and gained five places.⁴ The ranking therefore records relative movement in a field whose absolute ratings fell. It says nothing about the assets managed in each centre, the number of clients or the profitability of its institutions. For the purposes of this chapter it is useful mainly as a record of how international professionals perceive Lugano: as a recognized Swiss centre, clearly behind Zurich and Geneva, but ahead of the Italian and Monegasque competitors on its doorstep.

Notes

1. Z/Yen, "Press Release: Global Financial Centres Index 39: Top Four Financial Centres Clear Leaders", 26 March 2026, https://www.zyen.com/news/press-releases/press-release-global-financial-centres-index-39-top-four-financial-centres-clear-leaders/. ↩
2. Z/Yen and China Development Institute, The Global Financial Centres Index 39 (Chinese edition, 26 March 2026), Table 1, https://www.longfinance.net/documents/4327/GFCI_39_Report_2026.03.26_Chinese.pdf. The ranks and ratings were read from the Chinese edition of the report, which contains the full table. ↩
3. GFCI 39 (above), Table 1, which also gives the ranks of GFCI 38. ↩
4. GFCI 39 (above), Table 1: Geneva 731 points (GFCI 38: 745), Lugano 724 (729), Zurich 738 (743), Milan 704 (718). ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.