Bermuda has dropped three places in the world rankings for financial centres, according to the latest Global Financial Centres Index released this month.

The Index, which is published by the City of London and written by Z/Yen Group, ranks financial centres based on external benchmarking data and current perceptions of competitiveness.

The report, which is the third of its kind produced, shows that London and New York are the top financial centres in the world, the former due mainly to the good access to the markets, skilled staff and a proportionate regulatory regime.

Despite gaining 11 points to total 573, Bermuda fell from 25th to 28th as a result of new entries to the index from offshore and other centres, while the Channel Islands' two main financial centres, Jersey and Guernsey were on the up from joint 23rd to 16th and 19th respectively, and new arrivals Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands came straight in at 26th and 27th respectively. The Cayman Islands also declined one place to 25th, with a points total of 575.

Bermuda was to be found in the volatile category of financial centre, defined as one that "was not rated as highly, but might be able to move upwards rapidly if they could improve in some respects". Meanwhile, the Island fell between unpredictable and stable in terms of variance of assessments versus sensitivity to instrumental factors.

As far as the value and volume of shares traded on the stock exchange, Bermuda (Hamilton) comes bottom of the pile with $12 million worth of shares, lagging far behind the likes of New York and London with $4.6 trillion and $627 million respectively, while it also secures last place for capitalisation of firms listed on the stock exchange at $2.8 billion, but the number of companies trading on each exchange has to be taken into account.

The newly-introduced e-readiness index, which calculates the technological, economic, political and social assets of 69 countries and the cumulative impact of these assets on their respective information economies, shows Hamilton to be middle to lower ranking out of 20 centres with a score of 8.59 out of 10, comparing favourably to such leading financial centres as London and the Cayman Islands with the same score, and not too far behind Copenhagen on 8.88.

Elsewhere, the global competitiveness index, the rankings of which are drawn from a combination of publicly available hard data and the results of the Executive Opinion Survey, a comprehensive annual study carried out by the World Economic Forum, together with its network of partner institutes, has Hamilton joint last with Edinburgh, London, the Cayman Islands and Jersey out of 20 centres, with a points total of 5.41.