The top 10 CFOs in Australian fintech in 2026

The turnaround seat, delivered. Bell arrived from Westpac and Barclays with a treasury and group-finance pedigree and has presided over Zip's swing to record FY26 earnings: transaction volume of $16.7 billion, total income of $1.35 billion and cash net profit up 45.7 per cent, powered by the US business. Three years ago the market questioned whether BNPL economics worked at all. The finance function answered.

Very few people have built the finance function of a new Australian bank. Leslie joined the SME challenger in 2019, before its 2021 float, then the biggest fintech listing of that year, and has scaled it to a $14.7 billion lending book with profit before tax up 34 per cent in FY26. The ex-Morgan Stanley banker's seat spans prudential capital, deposits and a listed register: the full-contact version of the fintech CFO job.

Eight and a half years in the seat, the longest tenure on this list, including the non-bank lender's 2021 ASX float, one of the biggest of that year. McGrath followed it with a record first half in 2026 on originations, presented alongside the chief executive on 20 August. Funding a non-bank lender through a rate cycle, a listing and a mortgage war without drama is exactly the kind of CFO work that never trends and always compounds.

The most experienced pair of hands in Australian payments finance. Pala spent roughly a decade as CFO of Tyro through its 2019 IPO era before joining SME lender Shift, where he priced the firm's largest-ever asset-finance securitisation, $350 million, in July 2026. The only person on this list to have held the CFO seat at two of the companies this market watches. His tenure score counts the decade at Tyro, not just twenty months at Shift.

Took over Australia's largest independent merchant-payments company, $43 billion in annual transaction value, and held the finance function steady through a chief executive change within her first year. Burke's background is heavyweight corporate finance, deputy CFO of Stockland and senior roles at Coca-Cola Amatil, brought into a payments company at exactly the moment it needed large-company discipline.

Under Wright, ex-deputy CFO of Angle Auto Finance with divisional CFO stints at Westpac and Macquarie, the consumer lender pushed its loan book past $2 billion, up 34 per cent, on record originations of $1.23 billion in FY26. Growing a consumer book that fast while improving profitability is a funding-desk achievement as much as a growth story.

Inflection delivered: Wisr posted its maiden full-year profit in FY26 with the loan book up 32 per cent past $1 billion. Lewis, ex-KPMG and Avoka, took a sub-scale consumer lender the market had written down and walked it across the profitability line. Smallest company in the ranked ten, biggest percentage turn.

The payments-infrastructure seat. Brice came from the CFO chair of Australian Payments Plus, the merged eftpos, BPAY and NPP entity, to Cuscal, the company that clears and settles for much of the fintech sector and floated in late 2024 in the biggest ASX listing of that year. She delivered its FY26 full-year results in August 2026, and she inherited the seat from Sean O'Donoghue, who held it for over a decade and told that story on The CFO Track, from Wembley's half-billion loss to IPO of the year.

Two months in the seat but scored on the strength of what she brings to it: eight years as CFO of ASX-listed OFX, BT Financial Group before that, and fifteen years at GE. Verth joined the lender in July 2026 with its $3.1 billion portfolio growing at 22 per cent. An experienced listed-company CFO choosing a fintech lender is itself a signal about where this sector's talent market is heading.

The overachiever seat. Yuen, an ex-PwC partner, joined the Brisbane crypto exchange as CFO and inside eighteen months helped drive the acquisition of New Zealand's largest exchange, the $100 million-plus Caleb & Brown deal, the largest crypto acquisition in the region, and an Australian Financial Services Licence, before the board asked her to step up as acting co-chief executive in April 2026. When the finance leader is the one the board reaches for, that tells you the calibre of the finance leader.