Today the export of financial services from Australia accounts for merely 3% of that sector’s overall contribution to the economy. Perhaps that strong reliance on domestic business helped shelter Australia’s finance sector from the worst of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). In the world’s list of ten safest banks, four of them are in Australia. (Bizarrely enough we have a “four pillars” banking strategy and today have only four major banks.)

Yet compare us to London – one of the world’s leading finance centres. There the global rump of business contributes 50% of the sector’s contribution to the economy. Clearly Australia has room for growth.

Prior to the full impact of the GFC, the Ministry of Finance commissioned a report to examine Australia’s potential as a global financial centre. Also included was an examination of the regulatory framework that would be required. Are we headed the way of Lehman Brothers by unravelling our rules and regulations? Apparently not, according to Mark Johnson, former Macquarie Bank deputy chairman and architect of the report, “Australia As A Financial Centre.”

“We are not trying to build a financial system on steroids with artificial inducements,” Johnson said in today’s The Australian.

What we could expect was more banking competitiveness, an increase in financial products, and a boost to financial services jobs growth.

While it is some time before Sydney overtakes Hong Kong or Singapore as a financial centre the drive to boost our country’s importance can’t be a bad thing.