Australia’s peak fintech body, FinTech Australia has received a $200,000 funding grant from the Federal Treasury to promote Australia as a world leading fintech destination. The grant will be used to market Australia’s fintech sector and raise international awareness through digital channels via the Austrade network.
Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison announced the funding at FinTech Australia’s inaugural summit, Collab/Collide 2016 in Melbourne last week. Morrison said the funding will promote FinTech Australia and government initiatives that are already underway.
Morrison believes that backing Australian fintech startups will stimulate technological innovation, making financial markets more efficient and consumer focused.
“As Treasurer I want to help create an environment for Australia’s fintech sector where it can be both internationally competitive and play a central role in aiding the positive transformation of our economy,” Morrison previously said.
FinTech Australia president Simon Cant said the funding grant will help the fintech body “really bang the drum for our most exciting fintechs, regtechs and data ventures, particularly those with global potential, and put them on the international stage”.
He said, “We have been thrilled with the extent to which the Federal Treasurer and the Government have seen and embraced the potential of fintech, RegTech and the Data economy to transform Australia.”
Earlier this month EY Sweeney and FinTech Australia unveiled the results of the 2016 Census report on the fintech landscape, which identified a total of 250 fintech companies across Australia, highlighting just how fast the sector is growing locally and internationally.
Australia’s top performing fintechs are based in Sydney and Melbourne, with this year’s global Fintech100 report confirming Sydney as the biggest fintech hub in Australia, and one of the biggest in the Asia Pacific region.
“An incredible eight of the nine Australian companies on the Fintech 100 list are based in Sydney. This sort of global recognition of Sydney’s booming fintech scene highlights our city is the best launching pad into Asia,” Minister for Trade, Tourism and Major Events Stuart Ayres said.
To give Australia an even greater competitive advantage within the Asia Pacific region, the 2016 Census report said the overall appeal of Australia as a place to live and work needed to improve. In improving the environment, the Census report also noted that better regulations for fintechs need to be implemented to allow them to product market fit during the early stages of conception.
On the latest funding announcement CEO of FinTech Australia, Danielle Szetho said, “It’s great validation of the alignment of our vision for Australia with Treasury’s, particularly the need to attract more great talent into the ecosystem, and partnership opportunities to help our best fintech companies expand into other overseas markets.”
Image: FinTech Australia committee and events team. Source: Supplied.
Lin Tian is a Natural Language Processing (NLP) researcher with a doctorate in Computer Science, specializing in misinformation detection and computational modeling. Marian-Andrei Rizoiu is an Associate Professor leading the Behavioral Data Science lab at the University of Technology Sydney. His interdisciplinary research crosses computer and social sciences.
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