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Mauritius, the East African island nation, is destined to become the southern hemisphere’s leading international financial centre within the next decade, Nigel Green, the CEO of deVere Group, said on Monday. Green’s comments came after the Financial Services Commission of Mauritius approved an investment banking licence for deVere Group, one of the world’s leading financial advisory consultancies.

The deVere Group CEO said Mauritius emerged as the ideal destination, in the southern hemisphere, to set up an investment bank after months of comprehensive research and detailed analysis of leading international financial centres around the world.

“Amongst other major influential factors, Mauritius has a strong global reputation, which is founded on the fact that the government is unequivocally pro-business – which is, of course, key to attracting foreign investment – and this is reflected in its policies and its procedures,” Green said. “Mauritius also has an enviable reputation for its legally robust framework and its educated and English and French-speaking population.”

According to the CEO of deVere Group, other factors that contributed to Mauritius’s suitability as an international financial centre are: an internationally convenient time zone, good communications systems, and world-class infrastructure and accessibility.

“If our research reports these findings about Mauritius, it can be reasonably assumed that our global financial brands will also be coming to the same conclusions,” Green said. “This is especially true at a time when firms like ours are wanting to look beyond the more established centres of international finance due to their rising operational costs and increasing and unnecessary bureaucracy.”

Mauritius is an archipelago of islands located about 2,000 km off the southeast coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. The country is the only Hindu-dominated African country, with a population of about 1.3 million people. It is also one of the richest countries on the continent with a per capita GDP of $11,004 as of 2014, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Green said, “With this in mind, I am confident that Mauritius could become the southern hemisphere’s leading international financial centre within the next 10 years. The northern hemisphere’s powerhouse international financial centres such as London, New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo will maintain their dominant position in the world for decades to come.”

Green noted that the southern hemisphere’s other international financial centres such as Sydney, Sao Paolo and Johannesburg, will need to up their game in order to compete with Mauritius as global financial hubs and to attract international financial services firms.

“Mauritius, with its financially competitive environment, its infrastructure, and its government’s agility and pro-business approach based on good governance and compliance procedures, is already ahead of the curve as a world-class business destination,” the deVere Group's CEO added.

Founded in 2002, deVere Group provides a range of financial planning and advisory services in areas such as asset management, education planning, life insurance, online fund platform, regular savings, and retirement planning. The company has over 80,000 clients in more than 100 different countries, with over $10 billion under advice and administration.