Malta has dropped eight places since March 2017 to 85th out of 92 financial services centres, in the Zyen Global Financial Services Index released today.

Malta improved its points since March by 15 to 609, but dropped in the rankings nevertheless.

There was an overall drop in confidence amongst the leading centres. Of the top 25 centres, 23 fell in the ratings and only two rose. At the lower end of the table, 20 of the 25 lowest rated centres actually rose in the GFCI ratings, Zyen noted.

“European ‘island’ centres did well. The British Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man all performed strongly and there were also strong rises for Malta, Reykjavik, and Gibraltar.”

London and New York remained in first and second place, with 780 and 756 points respectively: “Interestingly, despite the ongoing Brexit negotiations, London only fell two points, the smallest decline in the top 10 centres. Hong Kong has moved just ahead of Singapore into third – only two points ahead on a scale of 1,000,” the report said.

Read: London stays world's top finance centre despite Brexit

“Western European financial centres are still volatile. Frankfurt, Dublin, Paris and Amsterdam all rose, but Zurich, Geneva, and Luxembourg fell in the ratings. Overall assessments for the European centres continued to fluctuate as people speculate about which centres might benefit from London leaving the EU. However, the majority of centres in the region rose with Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Vienna all showing strong rises.”

The index is compiled using 102 instrumental factors, ranging from price competitiveness and business environment, to risk and corruption.

These quantitative measures are provided by third parties including the World Bank, The Economist Intelligence Unit, the OECD, and the United Nations. These were combined with financial centre assessments provided by over 3,000 respondents to the GFCI online questionnaire.