Australia has one of the fastest growing fintech sectors in the world. It is built on Australia’s A$10 trillion financial services industry.
Australian fintech is well aligned and connected with global markets. This makes Australia a great place to pioneer ideas or invest in fintech development.
Australia is renowned for payments systems technology. This is due to a broad range of credit and debit card schemes, and buy now pay later innovators, like Afterpay.
Australia has a national payments infrastructure and real-time gross settlements between banks. You can read more about the new payments platform on the Reserve Bank of Australia website.
One in 4 Australian businesses are also now operating cashless.
Opportunities
Areas of opportunity include:
- e-invoicing
- supplier management
- B2B payments infrastructure
- cross-border payments.
Digital banking platforms
Banks are looking for simple end-to-end platforms to manage banking.
The ‘Big 4’ banks in Australia hold a large majority market share by total assets. This means that partnering with a major bank opens huge market-penetration opportunities.
Opportunities
Areas of opportunity include new platforms that re-imagine banking products, processes and services using cloud.
Open banking
Australia moved towards open banking in 2020 with the launch of Consumer Data Right (CDR).
CDR gives consumers greater control over their financial data. It allows them to transfer the data to other trusted parties. This includes fintechs and financial services providers. This helps businesses to personalise services in a competitive marketplace.
Opportunities
Areas of opportunity include:
- data and analytics solutions that use big data
- artificial intelligence
- APIs to connect data sources and provide insights.
Regtech
Australia is one of the largest regtech hubs in the world.
There is strong demand to solve complex regulatory issues and promote effective governance in sectors including:
- finance
- energy
- telecommunications
Institutions also prefer to buy tech solutions rather than build them (Source: RTA, Industry Perspectives Report, 2021, accessed September 2021).
Australian regulation is often globally aligned so regtech solutions can be quickly adapted overseas.
Opportunities
Areas of opportunity include:
- know your customer and identity verification
- intelligence and investigations
- managed service solutions.
Insurtech
80% of insurers in Australia are partnering with insurtechs to:
- deliver new customer value
- improve claims
- market products.
(Source: EY, Insurtech: partnering to deliver value at scale, accessed September 2021)
This number is set to increase. Insurers are increasingly sharing data and integrating their products and services with insurtechs to reach new customers.
Opportunities
Areas of opportunity include:
- personalised usage products
- behaviour-based products
- paperwork elimination
- systems that provide real-time underwriting and pricing.
Cybersecurity
The financial services sector is the second largest customer of cybersecurity solutions in Australia. Businesses are investing in cybersecurity to:
- comply with local regulations
- hold data securely
- maintain customer trust.
Major banks reported millions of cyber-attacks each month during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Opportunities
Areas of opportunity include:
- cyber expertise outsourcing and managed services
- threat intelligence, incident response and operational security.
Blockchain
Blockchain and cryptocurrency is the fastest growing fintech sector in Australia.
This includes innovations in bond operations and smart programmable money. Australia is playing a key role in blockchain research and developing international blockchain standards.
Opportunities
Areas of opportunity include:
- auditability of transactions
- peer-to-peer marketplaces and payments
- provenance and supply chain management
- information privacy through permissioned blockchains.
More information
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