How To Start A Fintech Company: A Guide For Techie Entrepreneurs

With the widespread successes of companies like Afterpay, Airwallex, MYOB, and more, Australia has garnered itself a reputation for producing revolutionary fintech enterprises.

And now that cities like Melbourne and Brisbane have been recognised as rapidly growing international tech hubs, there has simply never been a better time for Aussie tech entrepreneurs to act on their own business ideas and get in on what is still the ground floor of this burgeoning digital industry.

But starting your own fintech company is easier said than done in a lot of ways. After all, fintech is a composite industry generated by the melding of technology and financial services. Because of this, you could argue that there are double the regulations and vendor responsibilities to keep in mind when developing fintech services. So how do you set up a fintech company that’s built for success?

We’ll be examining a handful of the most important considerations that fintech entrepreneurs must make when developing their own enterprises today, so read on to find out more.

Familiarise yourself with regulations and legal requirements

From securing your ISO 27001 certification for information security management systems to attaining your Australian Credit Licence (ACL) in order to provide credit services, there are a plethora of preparatory steps that fintech entrepreneurs can take to ensure that their business is built on a strong legal and regulatory foundation. And as we mentioned, fintech startups will have to engage with regulations for both the technology and financial sectors to make sure that their business is commercially viable and offers a safe experience for their consumer base.

Entrepreneurs are advised to take their time when it comes to engaging with all relevant industry regulations, both those that pertain to the safety and security of your customers as well as for your staff and other stakeholders. This means developing communications and marketing materials that accurately reflect your company’s services and other offerings, and developing digital platforms like websites or mobile apps that keep company and user data secured. 

Remember that your fintech company will likely be collecting sensitive data round the clock once your enterprise is fully operational, so it pays to invest in data management now to ensure that your company has the strongest possible launch and can build a glowing reputation from the get-go.

Outline the fintech services you’re looking to provide

Once you’ve registered your company with ASIC (or the ‘Australian Securities and Investments Commission) and finalised all the details with your ABN, it’s finally time to start planning what your company will look like. This means identifying the kinds of fintech services or financial products that you’ll be looking to offer to your consumer base.

Are you looking to provide BNPL (‘buy now, pay later’) services like Afterpay? Or are you hoping to establish yourselves as a non-bank financial lender? Answering these questions now can help you develop your fintech company and its branding with greater certainty and direction.

This is also a good time to engage with the target audience or consumers that you’ll be looking to tailor your services towards. Are you looking to be a B2B fintech service provider, or are you going to develop products and services that are more consumer-oriented? Or better still, will you provide a mixture of both – offering products like business bank accounts to business owners and short-term credit loans that are perfectly tailored to consumer spending? You may even decide to venture into the lesser explored territory of fintech and retirement planning.

Whatever services you’re looking to provide, familiarising yourself with them now at the inception of your business in order to tailor your development strategies around these services can help set your fintech enterprise up for success.

Familiarise yourself with the competition

Of course, when it comes to developing your own business, understanding your competition is just as vital to understanding your own enterprise, especially in an industry like fintech that’s so poised for evolution. It’s imperative that you conduct thorough market research and head competitor analyses to identify how your competitors are setting up their own fintech products and services. Examining their business models and branding can also help you shape your own.

It’s also a good rule of thumb to stay on top of industry trends and current events. Fintech as an industry has attracted a bit of attention in mainstream Australian media, so staying on top of news stories shouldn’t be too difficult. Alongside reading through local and national news publications, it’s also a good idea to maintain a presence on industry social media platforms, join industry bodies like Fintech Australia, and attend industry events that may be in your locality. There are plenty of networking opportunities for fintech professionals available across Melbourne, Sydney, and even Brisbane year-round.

Use your professional network to find collaborators

Speaking of networking opportunities, your business can only be as strong as the team that you collaborate with, so investing in talent should be another foremost priority when establishing your own fintech enterprise. For this reason, fintech entrepreneurs are encouraged to lean on their professional network in order to secure investment opportunities as well as leads on suitable candidates for operational roles in your fledgling enterprise.

It’s also important to note that you should be looking for more than just financial specialists or programmers when cultivating your fintech industry network. As is the case with any business in the digital age, business owners can also benefit from partnering with other tech-savvy specialists like digital marketing professionals, web designers, graphic designers, and virtually anybody else who can help develop your business idea even further. Don’t be afraid to collaborate with people who have skills that you don’t, and perhaps even seek opportunities to work remotely with specialists who are based overseas or interstate. 

Your network can never be ‘too large’, so encourage yourself to speak with people and forge connections wherever you can. You may be surprised by the professional relationships that you end up accruing and who may end up working with you most frequently along the way.

Starting a fintech company isn’t all that different to starting any other type of enterprise, except for the fact that you do need to keep in mind that the industry you’re looking to enter is still very much in its infancy. Part of the reason why fintech as a sector is still so full of potential is because even its industry leaders don’t know where the next few years of technological developments will take us. Technologies like the blockchain and artificial intelligence are being continuously experimented with by fintech companies today, and the industry is also still adapting a lot of traditional financial services (i.e. pensions and superannuation) to more agile fintech models, so there’s plenty of room for emerging enterprises to make waves. So get out there and start surfing!