Projects

Client’s challenge: 

With the 2025 Federal Election looming, the Financial Services Council (FSC), representing the Australian finance sector that manages over $3 trillion for 15.6 million Australians, is concerned about the country's weak economic growth. The FSC recognises the need for private sector-led growth to revitalise the economy. As a major contributor to the domestic economy, the financial services industry plays a crucial role in achieving sustainable economic growth, creating secure jobs, and improving living standards.

To address these issues, the FSC outlined 15 key reform priorities for the financial services sector. These priorities are part of the FSC's broader advocacy efforts to support reforms that benefit consumers and strengthen the financial services industry. To bolster public communication of these priorities, the FSC sought an estimate of the economy-wide benefits that would result from its recommendations. 

Our solution:  

Positive Economics Advisory estimated the economy-wide gains from the FSC’s recommended reforms. To do so, we firstly quantified the direct impacts of productivity gains for the financial services sector, its customers and taxpayers by drawing on the existing reports that the FSC had commissioned to analyse the impacts of some of its reforms. Those were then supplemented with estimates of the potential direct impacts achievable from other FSC reforms where primary research had not been commissioned. Together, we quantified the direct impacts of 12 of the FSC’s 15 reform priorities. We then analysed the impact on the broader economy using an economy-wide model. We found it would add $800 million in productivity to the financial services sector, increase exports by $2 billion and grow GDP by $19 billion over the next decade.

Media coverage of the report outcomes were reported in The Australian and on Ausbiz.