Economic Recovery from the Pandemic - World Alliance of International Financial Centers

The world’s leading financial centers stand together and will do their part to mitigate the current crisis and to prepare for an economic recovery. International financial centers will play a vital role in getting the world’s economy back on its feet as well as in serving the real economy and society as a whole in the post-crisis.

The global economic shutdowns necessitated by the pandemic have required unprecedented interventions, and our industry has been vital in supporting these actions. As soon as the Coronavirus is defeated, we need to restart the global economy as part of the recovery process.

In the short term, resilience is critical. We need to protect and serve the most vulnerable parts of our economies:

Entrepreneurs and start-ups are key sources of innovation. We need to support them in challenging times with emergency funds.
SMEs are the backbone of our economies. They represent a large part of global employment, and we need to support them. They need access to both public and private funding.
Many people have lost their jobs due to the current crisis, and others are employed only part-time with lower wages. We also need to support them for keeping our societies together.

In the medium term, countries need to scale up investments and continue to develop digital infrastructures. During the phases of lockdowns, we have experienced the importance of digital services in finance and beyond.

In the long run, it is essential that we reconsider our economic models and give a new priority to long-term perspectives, innovative business models, sustainable economies, and environmental and social considerations.

To contribute to these different priorities, we set up joint international working groups and issued recommendations for the following four topics:

SME Finance
coordinated by Astana International Financial Centre, Toronto Finance International, and the Belgian Finance Center
Regulation
coordinated by Paris Europlace, TheCityUK, and the CMA Oman
Sustainable Finance
coordinated by Abu Dhabi Global Market and Stuttgart Financial
Innovation & FinTech
coordinated by Qatar Financial Centre and Luxembourg for Finance

Publications: