Of 40 Australian fintechs we tracked, 22 (55%) had a finance person in place before their first announced round, and only 10 made a CFO their first finance hire. Lending and payments businesses usually need a finance leader somewhere between seed and Series A.
Fintech is not one kind of business
The word covers companies whose finance needs have almost nothing in common. As I put it on a podcast earlier this year:
“Fintech might be a non-bank lending business or like a payments business, but it could also be an accounting software is still considered Fintech. Or it might be like a governance or fraud checking business. So those two although still considered Fintech, are very different businesses.”[1]
An accounting or fraud-checking product sold on subscription behaves like software, and the software timing for a CFO applies to it. The rest of this page is about the other kind: the lender, the payments business, the platform that holds or moves customer money. That is where the finance hire question changes.
Why lending and payments need finance sooner
In a software business the finance person reports on the business. In a lender or a payments company they help run it: funding lines, settlement, the cash that belongs to customers, the covenants a warehouse funder sets. I said it plainly on the Behind The Story podcast:
“With Fintech, depending on the type of Fintech, because there’s like non-bank lending or there’s payments, which are very capital intensive. Like there’s a lot of money going through it. So you will need someone a little bit sooner because the operations of the business is finance itself.”
On timing, I put the first CFO for a fintech with a strong lending or payments component at around Series A, against Series B for a single-product SaaS business.[2] The first finance hire, the person below that CFO, often lands earlier still, from seed. A recent CFO brief I took from a non-bank lender was as much about securitisation and treasury management as it was about reporting, which is a different candidate from the one a software company needs.
What 40 Australian fintechs actually did
We dated the finance hires at 194 venture-backed Australian companies against their publicly announced funding rounds. 40 of them are fintechs, and all 40 have at least one dated finance hire. Here is how they compare with every company in the study.
| Fintech (40 companies) | All sectors (191 companies) | |
|---|---|---|
| Had a finance person before the first announced round | 22 of 40 (55%), a median 15 months ahead | 100 of 191 (52%), a median 17 months ahead |
| Hired after the first round | 18 of 40, a median 21 months later | 91 of 191, a median 18 months later |
| First finance hire was a CFO | 10 of 40 (25%) | 56 of 191 (29%) |
| First hire was a head of finance or finance director | 12 of 40 (30%) | 44 of 191 (23%) |
| Founding to first finance hire, median | 2.3 years (34 companies) | 3.5 years (176 companies) |
Three things stand out. Fintechs are slightly more likely than the average company to have a finance person before the first round (55% against 52%), and they get there fastest from founding: a median 2.3 years, against 4.0 for software and 3.6 for deep tech. The first hire is most often a head of finance or finance director, 12 of 40, the highest share of any sector. And the CFO title comes first only a quarter of the time. 30 of the 40 started below CFO.
The sources are different too. Across the whole study, 11 first finance hires came straight from a bank or financial institution, and 7 of those 11 went to a fintech. In fintech that ties with large corporates (7 of 40 each) as the most common previous employer. Only 6 of 40 came from another startup, against 25 of 82 in software.
Five of the 17 fintechs we tracked that reached Series B or later had no internal finance hire we could see when that round was announced. All five hired within nine months of it. That is a statement about public records, not about who was doing the work: an outsourced or fractional finance provider does not show up on anyone’s LinkedIn, so “no internal hire” is not the same as “nobody doing finance”.
For the full study across all 194 companies, by round and by sector, read when Australian startups make their first finance hire.
What a licence adds to the finance seat
This section describes what Australian regulators require of licensed financial businesses. It is general information, not legal advice, and whether your product needs a licence at all is a question for a lawyer who knows it. What it shows is why the finance seat in a licensed fintech carries recurring regulatory work that a software company never sees.
- Financial services. A business that provides financial services generally needs an Australian financial services licence from ASIC under the Corporations Act 2001. Licensees must keep adequate financial, technological and human resources and adequate risk management systems. ASIC’s Regulatory Guide 166 sets base financial requirements: the licensee must be solvent and hold positive net assets at all times, must have enough resources to meet its anticipated cash flow expenses (the common ways to show it involve a cash flow projection over at least the next three months), and its annual audit report has to cover compliance with those requirements.
- Credit. A business that engages in credit activities generally needs an Australian credit licence under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009. Ongoing obligations include adequate financial resources, compliance systems, responsible lending, trust accounts where client money is held, and an annual compliance certificate lodged with ASIC.
- Breach reporting. Both kinds of licensee must report reportable situations to ASIC, in most cases within 30 calendar days of first having reasonable grounds to believe one has arisen.
- Deposits. Carrying on banking business, taking deposits and making advances, requires authorisation from APRA under the Banking Act 1959. APRA’s licensing guidelines include a Restricted ADI pathway that lets a new entrant conduct limited banking business for a maximum of two years before it has to meet the full prudential framework.
- Money laundering. A business that provides a designated service under the anti-money laundering laws is a reporting entity that must enrol with AUSTRAC, and remittance and virtual asset service providers must also apply for registration before they start providing those services.
Read as a job description, that list is a cash projection kept current, a solvency and net assets position watched all year rather than at year end, licence accounts that an auditor will test, and a reporting clock that starts when something goes wrong. In a licensed fintech someone has to own those deliverables from the day the licence is granted. If that is the founder or an outside provider, the brief for the first finance hire should say when it stops being them.
Three Australian fintechs, in the order they hired
These are sequences, not prescriptions. Each is read from public professional profiles and announced rounds, titles and dates only, and none of them says a different order would have worked better or worse.
| Before its first announced round | After it | |
|---|---|---|
| Zepto (payments, founded 2018) | A part-time Director of Finance in April 2020, 23 months before its A$25M Series A. A Head of Finance in August 2021, 7 months before it. | A Chief Financial Officer in January 2023, 10 months after the Series A, with a finance manager, FP&A and accounting roles around it. |
| Block Earner (founded 2021) | A Financial Accountant in August 2021, 4 months before its A$6.4M seed round. | A Head of Finance a month after the seed, a second Head of Finance in March 2024, and a Finance Manager 8 months after its A$8M Series A. |
| Stake (investing platform, founded 2017) | No finance hire visible before its first announced round in 2019. | A Group Financial Controller in 2021, the year of its A$40M Series A, then an accountant, a finance manager and FP&A. A Finance Director in 2024 and a Head of Finance in 2025. |
Two of the three put a finance leader in before their first announced round; Stake built its team after raising. Zepto and Block Earner both had a head of finance in the seat before any CFO title appears on the record, and all three went on to build a team of several finance people within a few years of that first hire.
When it is time to run the search, I set out how a first-CFO search runs in Australia, from brief to signed contract.
Who to hire first, and when
The pattern in the data and the pattern in my searches line up. Most fintechs do not start with a CFO. They start with a head of finance or a financial controller who can build the controls, the reporting and the cash view, and they add a CFO once capital strategy, funding lines and investor relationships need a dedicated owner. Before either, plenty of founders bring in outside help to get the house in order ahead of a raise.
Where fintech differs is the bar for that first person. A lender or payments business needs someone who has sat close to funding, treasury and regulatory reporting, and the data fits: banks show up as a source of first hires in fintech far more than in any other sector. The trade-off I talk founders through is the one every fintech faces: bank experience brings rigour, and the hire still has to cope with the pace and ambiguity of a company without a playbook.
For the finance leaders who have done this seat well, see the best CFOs in Australian fintech.
Where these numbers come from
The figures come from Story Recruitment’s own study, built in September 2026: 194 Australian companies with a venture round that two independent searches both found, 191 of them with at least one dated finance hire, and 966 finance hires dated from public professional profiles and matched to public funding announcements. Rounds are dated to their announcement, which usually trails the close by weeks. The company list was built from finance people, so it describes companies that went on to hire internal finance; it cannot say what share of Australian fintechs have no finance lead at all. Outsourced and fractional providers do not appear in public employment records, so “no internal hire” never means “nobody doing finance”. Hiring early or late is not shown here to cause any outcome; these are sequences. The full method and its limits are on the study page.
Common questions
When should an Australian fintech hire its first CFO?
For a lending or payments business, usually around Series A, earlier than a single-product software company, because the money moving through the product makes finance part of operations. The first finance hire below the CFO often comes earlier still, from seed. Of 40 Australian fintechs we tracked, 22 had a finance person before their first announced round, and only 10 made a CFO their first finance hire.
Should a fintech's first finance hire be a CFO?
Usually not. Of the 40 Australian fintechs we tracked, 30 started below CFO, most often with a head of finance or finance director (12 of 40). A CFO tends to follow once capital strategy, funding lines and investor relationships need a dedicated owner.
Where do fintech finance leaders come from?
More often from banks and large corporates than in any other sector. In our study, 7 of 40 fintech first finance hires came straight from a bank or financial institution and another 7 from a large corporate, while only 6 came from another startup.
What does a licence change for the finance hire?
A licensed fintech carries recurring financial obligations. ASIC's Regulatory Guide 166, for example, requires an Australian financial services licensee to stay solvent with positive net assets, to have enough resources for its anticipated cash flow expenses, and to have its compliance with those requirements covered in its annual audit report. Someone has to own that work, and the brief for the first finance hire should say who. Whether a product needs a licence is a question for a lawyer.
References
- I said this as a guest on a July 2026 podcast episode about how the first finance hire changes by sector, and it is the first thing I ask a fintech founder: what does the product actually do with money?
- My words on the same episode: “if it’s a Fintech that’s got a big strong component on lending or payments, then it might be series A again. But if it’s a SaaS business that’s one jurisdiction, one location, one product, then it probably doesn’t need a proper CFO until series B.”
These guides set out how we see it, drawn from the searches we run and the finance leaders we place. They are general information about the market, not financial, accounting or legal advice, and they are no substitute for advice on your own circumstances.