India Emerges as Leading Global Financial Services Talent Hub; Mumbai, Delhi NCR, and Bengaluru Rank in Global Top 30: Colliers
Bengaluru, June 11, 2026: India has emerged as a leading global talent hub for the financial services industry, with its top cities ranking favorably in labor availability, talent pipeline, venture capital funding, and industry output. According to the newly released “Global Financial Services Markets: Top Talent Locations 2026” report by real estate advisory firm Colliers, financial services location strategies are shifting significantly as firms balance access to talent, cost competitiveness, and rapid technological change. While established global hubs continue to anchor the industry, a more distributed network of strategic and emerging markets is playing a growing role as organizations revise where their work is being done, Colliers said in a press release.
The research, which analyzed more than 200 markets worldwide, places Mumbai, Delhi NCR, and Bengaluru among the world’s top 30 financial services markets. Colliers categorized these markets into a three-tier system based on where talent depth, investment activity, and long-term growth prospects converge. Under this framework, Mumbai has featured prominently as a “Global Centre,” placing it alongside international peers like Los Angeles, Sydney, Tokyo, and Zurich. Delhi NCR emerged as a leading “Strategic Centre,” sharing its classification with cities like Guangzhou, Montreal, and Washington D.C.-Baltimore. Meanwhile, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, and Chennai were identified as key “Domestic & Operational Centres,” comparable to global peers like Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Sao Paulo.
The Asia Pacific (APAC) region as a whole has solidified its position as a core pillar of global industry activity, accounting for 39% of the global financial services companies included in the analysis—the highest share of any region. This massive scale is matched by a broad distribution of talent markets, with APAC representing about 36% of the identified global centers and dominating the domestic and operational categories with a 44% share of the ranked markets. Major regional cities such as Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo join India’s top metros in delivering strong performance across venture capital funding, labor strength, and overall industry output.
On the local front, India continues to lead the APAC region in talent depth and labor strength, placing six of its cities among the APAC top 10 on the labor index. Supported by large, skilled workforces and robust pipelines of professionals, Delhi NCR, Mumbai, and Bengaluru rank among the region’s strongest markets for financial services talent. In fact, due to its massive talent pools and high concentrations of target occupations, India completely swept the top spots of the APAC labor index category, with Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Pune ranking as the top three markets respectively.
“India is rapidly strengthening its position as a global financial services hub, backed by a deep talent pool, technology expertise and operational scale. As firms increasingly look beyond global financial headquarters and delivery centers, Indian cities are well positioned to support both strategic and high-value business functions. Not surprisingly, Mumbai, Delhi NCR & Bengaluru feature in the list of top 30 global financial services talent centers. Moreover, with increasing space uptake from leading global and domestic BFSI firms, the sector is likely to account for 15-20% of office demand in the next few years,” said Arpit Mehrotra, Managing Director, Office Services, Colliers India.
The report highlights that India’s leading office markets are heavily benefiting from this strong talent availability, technology expertise, and the expanding real estate footprint of Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) companies. While Mumbai firmly maintains its status as the country’s premier financial hub, cities like Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, and Chennai are increasingly drawing financial services firms. This migration is being driven by cost arbitrage, deep talent pools, and fast-maturing business ecosystems, especially as organizations seek scalable talent and specialized skills in high-value areas like digital banking, risk management, data analytics, and artificial intelligence.
Ultimately, data-driven decisions are shaping the future of the industry as organizations optimize workforce and location strategies in an increasingly dynamic business environment. Colliers notes that India’s financial services market is becoming multi-faceted, with leading cities strengthening their front-office capabilities while simultaneously moving up the value chain to handle more complex functions. This ongoing transition, accelerated by widespread digitalization and the rising adoption of AI, is fundamentally reshaping workspace models across the entire sector.
“As organizations reassess their talent and real estate strategies, access to market data and insights is becoming more important. Firms taking an evidence-based approach will be better positioned to compete for talent and capture growth. We envisage a more distributed and flexible global model for financial services delivery, with Asia Pacific positioned at the center of future growth,” said Mike Davis, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Occupier Services, Colliers.
