Sydney’s pitch to secure fintech jobs jackpot
Sydney is pitching to be on the receiving end of a high-quality jobs boom, with forecasts predicting an extra 100,000 “fintech” roles will be created in Australia by 2024.
NSW
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Sydney is pitching to be on the receiving end of a high-quality jobs boom, with forecasts predicting an extra 100,000 “fintech” roles will be created in Australia by 2024.
The NSW government is working to ensure the bulk of the financial technology jobs end up here.
It comes as a federal parliamentary inquiry into how to maximise the sector’s job growth will hold its first public hearings on Thursday.
The inquiry is being chaired by new NSW Liberal senator Andrew Bragg.
“If we aren’t good at technology and harnessing new ideas, Australia will be in big trouble,” Senator Bragg told The Daily Telegraph.
“Submissions to the Inquiry demonstrate technology is a jobs winner, not a jobs loser.
“We need to put more meat on the bone on our fintech plan. It will create more jobs and deliver more consumer choices.”
The inquiry has received 123 submissions.
The NSW government’s submission noted finance was the single biggest contributor to the state economy and that Sydney was home to 60 per cent of the nation’s fintech companies.
The Premier’s parliamentary secretary Gabrielle Upton said in the submission that NSW wants to be recognised as a global leader in “soft” infrastructure — the infrastructure that helps develop and support ideas for new industries, products and services.
Ms Upton said a plan to accelerate research and development in NSW was being developed with guidance from an advisory council chaired by Mr Gonski.
One of the first submissions was from the Australian Computer Society, which represents the Australian information and communications technology sector.
The ACS submission said Australia’s technology workforce was likely to grow by 100,000 from 2018-2024, at an annual pace nearly twice that of the broader economy.
The ACS warned that to catch up other global fintech leaders, such as the UK, it would be necessary to double that rate of jobs growth to 200,000.
FinTech Australia, on behalf of its 300 members, said in its submission that while “the number of people with the requisite skills appears to be increasing, there still needs to be more of a focus on developing science, technology, engineering and maths, and other computing skills.”
It said recruiting suitable engineering or software talents remained the top challenge for seven in 10 fintechs.
Arguably Australia’s best-known fintech company, Afterpay, said in its submission that there was an opportunity for Australia to be “more competitive globally if we take the right approach in supporting people to take a chance and do something different”.
“When we look at the United States, their top 10 companies are now dominated by consumer technology organisations – companies like Amazon and Google that didn’t exist 25 years ago,” the Afterpay submission said.
Originally published as Sydney’s pitch to secure fintech jobs jackpot
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