The executive director of the Argentine Fintech Chamber, Mariano Biocca, assured that the level of employment in the sector has grown at an annual average of 45% since 2017 in Argentina, the year the entity was created, when 6,961 people worked in the industry, and that by the end of 2022 they estimate to reach 27,128 jobs.
The parameters of the projection come from data provided by the companies in the sector on closings from previous years, future prospects and guaranteed hiring plans.
“We take the year 2017 as the basis for being the founding year of the sector. In this sense, until the end of 2021, the level of growth in employment year after year reached 45%,” Biocca said in an interview with Télam.
Currently, the Fintech sector employs 23,548 people in 330 companies in the countrywhich offer mostly positions in the IT areas (44%), Marketing and Business Development (14%), while the Administration and Finance sector registered a significant increase compared to 2021, going from 4% to 13% , according to the latest data released by the Chamber.
Although the level of employment quadrupled from 2017 to 2021, this year global macroeconomic factors “had a different impact on Argentina than in other countries.”
“In the country there was no process of decrease in the number of employees, but the growth of 45% did slow down. In any case, our calculations for the end of this year estimate a growth of 15% more compared to 2021, and 86% above 2020,” said Biocca, who has participated in the entity since its creation.
The latest Chamber report mentions that The geographical distribution of the sector in 2022 registers strong growth in the 20 provinces with a broad federal scope.
Although 88% of them work in the main urban centers of the country, especially in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (AMBA) and in the cities of Córdoba, Mendoza and Santa Fe, Biocca said that this is due to a quality of the entire fintech industry in Argentina.
On the other hand, 58% of the workers in the sector are men and 42% are womenwith a decrease of 5% in the number of women employed in this activity, in the last year, since last year they were 47% women and 53% men.
“Within the sector there is a mix of external factors that is often difficult to control. However, there are a good number of elements that we promote as a chamber to promote employment and diversify company services,” said Biocca, at the same time who recognized that the situation is different in a consolidated company compared to a company that is just beginning in the activity.
“The issue is not so much the big players who managed to diversify their lines of income in these years, but the smaller ones, we create a more viable environment for these companies to maintain and continue to grow, especially in a context in which increasingly with fewer applications to solve more things,” he said.
In this stage, the role of the Chamber is “elementary”since companies “can meet different colleagues, different business sizes, shortening learning curves”.
The spaces, he affirmed, generate tables with a multiplicity of voices, of visions regarding technical, business, or even regulation issues in the region.
“Today the Argentine Fintech Chamber is president of the Ibero-American Fintech Alliance, which positions us as a benchmark in the region when it comes to opening certain debates and problems in the sector.”
In this line, the Chamber works as a “neutral” and “institutional” meeting point, adapting not only to each type of company, but also “articulating meeting spaces”.
The Chamber has two great challenges for 2023: the evolution of the regulatory framework and the standardization of data.
“During the pandemic, as a matter of exception, we began to meet with various representatives virtually, this allowed greater participation and more representation. This is great news, especially in the framework of a country that is enormously centralized,” he said.
Although there is still no project to expand the epicenters in each province, Biocca argued that “it is feasible” that in 2023 there is a federal policy for the distribution of talent and training of digital talent “as long as connectivity is democratized and expanded.”
Finally, he said that the Chamber has two great challenges for 2023: the evolution of the regulatory framework and the standardization of data.
“The big game for next year will have to do with the balance of regulatory burden and incentives for technology companies, that is, specific matters that protect users, but also encourage companies to invest money and time in the industry,” he said.
Regarding the standardization of industry data in general, he said that it will allow “not only to measure employment, but also to know company data to measure the evolution of the industry.”
