Globalisation has helped to raise living standards around the world, enhancing productivity, and it has brought new opportunities to both emerging and developed economies. The economic connections and trade that characterise globalisation have grown important financial interdependence between countries and regions. These links have underpinned trade contracts, helped to hedge currency risks, extended domestic or international credit lines, and ultimately given confidence to markets and institutions enabling foreign capital inflows.

Cross border commerce is precisely what will enable the global economic recovery from Covid, and if deployed with care, can also foster a much more sustainable future. By building sophisticated ecosystems that combine human capital and skills with core infrastructure, global financial centres, such as Luxembourg, create a location that supports the entire financial services value chain, and they encourage the participation of both domestic and international institutions.

Financial centres enable access to expertise which may not be available locally, they ease the path of entry for foreign institutions into developing nations, and in doing so enable global investors to address capital shortages in one part of the world by tapping excess liquidity in another. These locations serve as launchpads to facilitate the vital work of building back better.