FinTech Australia welcomes blueprint to grow Australian and Sydney fintech ecosystem

FinTech Australia today welcomed a new report which outlines the astounding growth of the Australian fintech industry since 2014 and finds that Sydney is a strong challenger to Singapore when it comes to Asian fintech supremacy.The report prepared by KPMG and the Committee for Sydney - with the support of the New South Wales Government - is entitled Scaling the FinTech Opportunity for Sydney and Australia.FinTech Australia welcomed the reports finding that the number of Australian fintech companies has grown from less than 100 in 2014 to 579 in 2017.  Based on interviews and the proliferation of companies in these areas, the report also finds that regtech, payments and blockchain are areas where Australia has the potential to lead in fintech.The report also finds, based on interviews with Australian fintech industry participants, that Sydney was seen as ahead of Hong Kong but slightly behind Singapore when it came to being a leading global centre for fintech.The report states that, based on this, Sydney could "potentially challenge Singapore.The report outlines a series of recommendations to grow the Sydney and Australian fintech ecosystem, including that the New South Wales Government:

• Refreshes the existing Financial Services Strategy, to align effort between the private and public sector and drive industry growth particularly in the priority areas of regtech, blockchain and payments
• Support greater co-ordination with the Australian Government, including to make it easier for fintechs to understand government support programs and to promote fintech internationally
• Build meaningful international pathways for Australias fintech sector, to help support the export of Australias fintech capability offshore and to attract the best fintech companies to Sydney.

This report provides a strong and much-needed overview of the Australian fintech industry, including illustrating how it has grown since 2014 and also giving some indication of how we are standing against other jurisdictions,  said Fintech Australia CEO Danielle Szetho.Were pleased to see the finding that Sydney is a serious challenger to Singapore as this reaffirms our perspective when we released our member ecosystem map in June.FinTech Australia, as Australias industry association for fintech, also stands ready to assist with implementing the reports recommendations.We are currently rolling out an international public relations program in support of Australian fintech and some of the insights given by this report will be hugely beneficial for this program.We are also keen to assist State and Australian agencies to help create a robust model of collaboration and promotion to help grow the nations fintech industry.Separately, the finding about Australias strength in payments - due to the implementation of the New Payments Platform (NPP) later this year - illustrates the need to continue to work and deliver outcomes to leverage the NPP as a fintech innovation tool.This report is an important update to the 2014 report undertaken by KPMG and the Committee for Sydney, which led to the creation of the Stone & Chalk fintech hub in Sydney and indeed to the creation of FinTech Australia as a national industry association.