How financial centres can reimagine the global dynamics of finance
As the global financial landscape undergoes rapid transformation, established financial centres face mounting pressure to adapt and evolve. In this article, His Excellency Arif Amiri, Chief Executive Officer of DIFC Authority, explores how visionary urban planning, robust governance and integrated infrastructure can redefine the future of finance.
Arif Amiri
Published: 27/01/2026
5 min read
Financial centres have been enabling rapid growth in trade and commerce for decades. Since the 1980s, economies with international financial centres have experienced per capita annual growth rates of 3.3 per cent, compared to 1.4 per cent for the world. With strategic advantages, financial centres have boosted foreign direct investment and innovation underpinned by a robust regulatory framework.
For the past two decades, global financial centres have competed for impact and influence on a broadly familiar set of parameters. Some of the conditions that determined competitiveness included an ecosystem that can attract institutions, concentrate talent, provide access to capital, support with strong regulation and offer international connectivity. Today, however, an increasingly fundamental challenge is shaping the next phase of growth: the ability of the physical infrastructure to support the accelerating pace of change in the financial landscape.
Many successful financial centres are contending with aging infrastructure, higher costs, geoeconomic risk, in an environment of new digital assets, private capital flows and more, and are running up against limits that were not apparent when they were originally designed. Today the spectrum of firms that are operating out of these financial centres is vastly different. Global financial institutions now share space with technology firms, data-intensive businesses, regulatory and compliance specialists, and emerging AI-driven innovators and startups that operate continuously rather than cyclically. In many cases, the physical environments that support these institutions have often remained static.
This is why expansion, for mature financial centres, has become a structural question rather than a symbolic one. Adding space in isolation does not solve the problem. Growth that fragments activity across disconnected districts may increase headline capacity, but it often weakens the very dynamics that made the centre successful and a popular finance hub. Without forward-thinking adaptation, traditional financial centres risk losing their competitive edge: by seeing talent migrate, innovation stagnate and ultimately diminish their long-term viability. Therefore, it is imperative to allow infrastructure, governance and connectivity to scale together.
The need for this approach reflects how global finance itself has changed. Modern financial ecosystems are no longer organised around a single core function. Today, they span capital markets, private wealth, professional and legal services, FinTech and RegTech platforms, data analytics, and increasingly artificial intelligence. That mix will begin to demand closer coordination and a joined-up approach between regulators and firms, and across disciplines.
Alongside these operational pressures, competition for talent has become more exacting. While preferring financial centres that provide an environment enabling collaboration, networking, and knowledge sharing, senior professionals and technologists also evaluate locations through a practical lens. Long distance commutes between offices, limited housing options, as well as limited consideration for lifestyle and wellbeing options all weaken a centre’s ability to retain people over time.
These realities are reshaping the physical design of financial districts. By 2050, over two-thirds of the world’s population is estimated to be living in urban areas. Single-use office zones, optimised for peak-hour occupancy, are increasingly giving way to mixed-use environments that support round-the-clock activity, being planned alongside residential space, education, hospitality, and public amenities as functional components of a working ecosystem which brings fluidity in work and life. Streets, public spaces, and pedestrian connections play a practical role in sustaining density, enabling interaction, and keeping districts operational as they grow. For investors, a mixed-use development offers an opportunity for diversified income and long-term growth potential.
Implementing such a vision in established urban environments presents its own formidable challenges, from significant capital investment and complex land acquisition to navigating existing regulatory frameworks and managing diverse stakeholder interests. Yet the long-term benefits for resilience and competitiveness far outweigh these hurdles. Within this context, established financial centres are rethinking how they expand.
In Dubai, this logic underpins the Dubai International Financial Centre’s (DIFC’s) extension into the Zabeel District now that the original Gate District is reaches completion. The Zabeel District will position DIFC as the region’s driver behind a new era of global finance, designed for the people and companies that will take the industry forward for decades to come. Rather than creating a separate satellite location, the expansion is conceived as a physically contiguous extension of the existing centre, designed to be polycentric to absorb future demand without dispersing activity across multiple sites or altering DIFC’s governance framework.
At its core, DIFC’s expansion emphasises deliberately on continuity. By extending the district in a single, integrated masterplan, DIFC is seeking to maintain proximity between institutions, preserve governance consistency, and support emerging areas of activity - such as advanced technology and AI - within the same operational environment. Seen through this lens, DIFC Zabeel is not a real estate project in isolation. It is a response to success, and a model for how far mature financial centres should revisit how they need to adjust to remain functional at scale.
Competition between financial centres will be increasingly determined by whether districts can continue to operate effectively as they grow, maintaining proximity, governance coherence, and institutional trust under pressure. Looking ahead, the success of DIFC Zabeel District will lie in its ability to absorb growth whilst preserving everything that defines the Centre today, underscoring its contribution to Dubai’s development and reimagining the global dynamics of finance. We are building the financial centre of the future. We are excited for what the future holds.