‘Very strong’ growth expected in financial broker population

According to Job Outlook, an initiative of the Australian government’s Department of Jobs and Small Business, the population of financial brokers (those that deal with loan and insurance transactions) will grow by an estimated 24,000 from 36,700 in 2018 to 43,900 in 2023.

This represents a projected annual average growth of 4,800 financial brokers per year from 2019 to 2023.

Job Outlook classified financial broking as a “high skill” job, with full-time brokers earning an average of $1,400 per week before tax, higher than the average pre-tax income of $1,230 for “all jobs” in Australia.  

Further, 83.4 per cent of financial brokers work full-time, which is above the average 68.4 per cent across all jobs nationwide.

The average age of financial brokers is 41 years, compared to the national average of 40 years for all jobs, while just 36.6 per cent of financial brokers are female, more than 10 percentage points lower than the all-jobs average of 46.7 per cent, according to Jobs Outlook.

A 2018 report by Deloitte Access Economics, titled The Value of Mortgage Broking, found that mortgage brokers that are sole traders earn an average income (after costs and before tax) of $86,417, while a broker business with more than one broker reported average pre-tax earnings of $119,838.

The study also revealed that the mortgage broking industry supported 27,144 full-time equivalent jobs in 2016-17, with 73 per cent of brokers working in mortgage businesses and 90 percent of sole trader brokers working full-time.

Other financial sector jobs are also expected to grow strongly over the next five years, such as credit and loan officers (from 32,900 in 2018 to 35,900 by 2023) and finance managers (from 58,700 in 2018 to 63,500 by 2023).

Growth in financial investment advisers and managers is expected to remain largely stable over the same period (from 43,500 in 2018 to 43,100 by 2023), while the number of bank workers is expected to go down (from 43,400 in 2018 to 41,000 by 2023).

Meanwhile, according to Sunsuper, financial sector job opportunities have continued to rebound in the first quarter of 2019 following a sustained period of weakness that coincided with the banking royal commission.

New data from the super fund shows that permanent job opportunities within the finance and insurance services sector rose by 10.1 per cent in the January-March quarter, while contingent job vacancies increased by 19.3 per cent, despite the ongoing housing slump and tightening of credit that is attributed, in part, to the 11-month long review into financial sector misconduct by commissioner Kenneth Hayne.

The growth in job opportunities in the latest quarter was still below what was recorded in the October-December 2018 quarter (around 13 per cent).

[Related: Broking industry contributes $2.9bn to the economy: Deloitte]