WAIFC members and observers share announcements and often also event programs. This opinion draws on publicly posted programs from https://waifc.finance/events.
Common themes for 2025 included FinTech, green finance, crypto, inclusion, and also the values of trust and fairness that make a marketplace attractive. National and regional topics remain dominant: IFCs are open to the world but anchored to where they live.
This opinion highlights some of the more unusual themes and approaches to draw attention to their work, in all their diverse potential – from micro to macro, from local to global.
Astana Finance Days: September 2025
The Astana International Financial Centre’s annual forum attracted participants from 82 countries who listened to 160 speakers in two days. One theme was how Islamic and sustainable green finance are in fact joined by many similarities of approach to values and risk/return. Another was how financial services support the creative economy. As the largest financial center in Central Asia, its overview of regional economic development was of particular value.
Stuttgart Finance Summit: September 2025
Like the commercial enterprises located in this state, Stuttgart Finance works well beyond the boundaries of Baden-Wurttemberg. This conference drew 1000 participants for forty sessions.
One panel stuck out: how to finance the next generation of Germany’s renowned mid-sized private companies, the “Mittelstand,” which are fierce world leaders in their areas of specialization. The panel explored how SMEs can remain innovative and future-proof through investments, collaboration with startups, and new approaches such as “venture clienting.” The mix of presenters was unusual: of the one of the supervisory board members of the state business promotional bank (L-Bank); the general partner of Maetch, a German VC company; the head of venture capital for Porsche, an automotive giant; and the team leader for strategy at the German Federal Army’s Innovation Hub.
Casablanca Business Forum: September 2025
Casablanca Finance City is in Africa and very near Europe. Its skills and laws enable it to be a source of finance for Morocco and also a geographical bridge to the north and the south. Two conference themes addressed that promising geography:
- “Riding the upswing – How Africa can convert cyclical gains into lasting prosperity.” The challenge is how to sustain this momentum and translate it into long-term growth. This keynote analyzed successful policy levers, financing models, and industrial strategies emerging across the continent, highlighting lessons that can be adapted by very different economies.
- “How are geopolitical shifts impacting investment in Africa?” The dynamics in 2025 have been reshaping foreign direct investment, creating opportunities as well as heightened uncertainty for investors and policymakers. Demonstrating resilience is an essential quality for long-term investors.
The forum examined which sectors were most exposed to global volatility, and which might see unexpected upsides. It also reviewed the role regional cooperation and policy harmonization play in mitigating risks and capturing emerging opportunities.
Greenwich Economic Forum: October 2025
For this annual conference, 2025 was a year of many themes, in contrast to the previous year’s heavy emphasis on private credit. Among the topics aired were:
- the benefits of public listed company regulation for successful business development
- the problem institutional investors have with trying to diversify away from the domination of American capital markets, given their weight in global index performance measurements
- defensive diversification for holding private credit when lending to public and private vehicles
- evaluating the structural changes to the American economy as the new administration’s measures arrive on multiple fronts
Dubai Fixed Income Alternatives Conference: October 2025
The Dubai International Financial Center hosted a one-day conference on investment strategies for evolving and growing debt markets. Set against the macroeconomic outlook, panels examined:
- Assessing the local private credit market
- Private wealth strategies in private credit
- Selecting fixed-income alternatives strategies
- Funding and structuring strategic partnerships
KORMARINE - October 2025
The Busan Finance Center shined a spotlight on key industries in its urban area: shipbuilding and innovative energy solutions for construction as well as marine transport. It hosted a pavilion at this conference as a participant and promoter. This decade, the majority of high value-added vessel orders were awarded to Korean shipyards. Since its first event in 1980, KORMARINE has reflected the evolving history of the shipbuilding and maritime industries – members of the Busan Finance Center play their role by channeling capital to the world-leading companies who work in this field.Renewable energies and future fuels are expected to play a more significant role in achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. The conference highlighted the latest advances in energy technology, showing where capital needs to be deployed.
Warsaw Finance Week – November 2025
It was the structure of Future Finance Poland’s program that stood out. After a keynote by the Minister of Finance and Economics, the first panel engaged on the question of what smart financial regulation is. The next step was to look at the region, with a chat with a representative of the neighboring Lithuanian Ministry of Finance, and then an examination of the EU Financial Centers Power Index and how financial centers compete within the EU.
With this background updated, the agenda became more specific: the evolving nature of payments, credit information markets, and compliance problems when a jurisdiction has multiple regulatory frameworks. Next, the program moved to building the future in topics where the Polish financial sector has real expertise - cyber defense and identity, building an eID as a foundation for trust in digital societies, digital onboarding, AI construction and testing in the EU, and finally how a cashless society works.
The politics of money matter, too. A panel focused on how Warsaw can position itself as the EU works towards capital markets integration. The Minister of Foreign Affairs addressed the conference on how geopolitics in 2025 have been modifying financial services.
Hong Kong FinTech Week x StartmeupHK Festival – November 2025
Supported by the Hong Kong Financial Services Development Council, the originality of the approach is the combination of a full-on finance IT conference with speakers and sessions throughout and exhibitors sharing their latest offer and a heavy emphasis on start-up financing. Entrepreneurs were invited to present their business goals and their finance needs to investors, a form of “speed dating” as businesses sought interested parties. Hong Kong does this to scale: this year, there were 37,000+ attendees, 800+ speakers, and 700+ exhibitors. Startups which found matches secured funding opportunities from investors, major financial institutions and corporations, and other channel partners there and ready with the 2025 version of a checkbook.
The Future of Finance: Next-Generation Financial Cities – November 2025
The Dubai International Financial Center hosted this global online event, together with Asia House. The event marked the launch of DIFC’s latest report on the Future of Finance: Next-Generation Financial Cities: New Models for Attracting Global Capital.
The discussion explored which cities are emerging as the world’s next financial powerhouses and examined how innovative approaches to governance, regulation, lifestyle, and talent attraction are shaping the financial hubs of the future. The focus here is on trends in IFCs around the world, not any one of them; their strategies, models, and partnerships that advance the growth of financial services.
FinanceMalta Conference – November 2025
FinanceMalta’s annual event had several distinctive features. One was to launch the event with a presentation of the government’s Malta Vision 2050 report, here emphasizing the role of finance in the country’s future development. Another was a session focused on “Rethinking Scale: A Small Nation’s Role in a Digitally-Driven Financial World.” And another session examined growth through niche specialization, which is quite possible from a European Union base in a world where so much business is conducted remotely.
TheCityUK’s National Conference – November 2025
Underscoring the point that there is more to UK finance than London, this year’s conference sponsored by Guernsey Finance and Yorkshire Buildings Society was held in Leeds. The purpose was to bring together policymakers, regulators, and senior industry leaders from across the UK’s regions and nations. Specifically, delegates reviewed how new initiatives, including the government’s Modern Industrial Strategy, can drive investment and so growth across the UK. Another session worked on what government – from ministers to mayors - can do to promote industry-led actions to drive greater growth and prosperity.
Abu Dhabi Finance Week – December 2025
For the past four years, the Abu Dhabi Global Markets conference has served almost as a world-wide synthesis of the past 11 months as the calendar year came to a close, and a look at what lay ahead.
The 2025 theme was “Engineering the Capital Network.” Broadly speaking, delegates were meant to explore the design of new financial systems built to harness innovation, artificial intelligence, and a rebalancing of global capital flows. The UAE and the GCC have gained influence as a gravitational center for capital and forward-looking investment strategy.
Sessions addressed topics that included urban planning, the macroeconomic position of the world economy, the next steps of the UAE national development plan, GCC outreach east and south, humanitarian work, new forms of energy, the massive transfer of wealth expected over the next two decades, real estate, innovation as an asset, digital assets, private markets becoming increasingly public.
Of particular note for WAIFC, New York University’s Stern Business School launched the inaugural Global Financial Center Competitiveness Index.[1] As the School announced, “using data science to blend data driven rankings with strategic analysis, it gives policymakers a clearer view of how financial centers compare and compete, helps emerging centers understand how to strategically plan for growth, and supports decision makers navigating increasingly complex global economic dynamics. The Institute advances research into the evolving global economic order, with a focus on the role of international financial centers. By creating a systematic benchmark for financial centers, it provides policymakers, business leaders, and investors with an evidence-based framework to navigate shifting global dynamics.”
[1] https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/news-events/stern-nyu-abu-dhabi-inaugural-financial-center-competitiveness-index-featured-dean-stern-nyuad