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Financial Services

Financial Nearshoring Proves Successful in Jacksonville Region

More than 20 major banks, insurance and investment services firms on Forbes’ Global 500 list have a presence in the Jacksonville region. In addition, several other global and regional financial services organizations make up what Financial Times referred to as “an emerging finance powerhouse.”

With this week’s announcement, add one more to that growing list. Wildermuth Advisory, an established investment firm, recently chose to move its headquarters from Atlanta to Ponte Vedra. The company’s CEO cited many reasons why they selected Jacksonville including the area’s existing large financial sector presence and lower cost of living compared to traditional markets.

Deutsche Bank has served as one of the biggest success stories of nearshoring its operations to Jacksonville when it shifted jobs traditionally only found on Wall Street to the area. In 2008, Deutsche Bank chose Jacksonville for a 100-employee single-function operations center due to the city’s corporate-friendly tax structure, low operating costs and quality of life. Today, the two Jacksonville campuses of Deutsche Bank have grown to 2,250 employees across all divisions including corporate finance, global markets, fintech/IT and cybersecurity.

Australian-based financial services company Macquarie Group has experienced similar success to its workforce and operations in their downtown Jacksonville office with 120 jobs in 2015 to 225 today. Jacksonville is also the global headquarters of Florida Blue; TIAA Bank; Fidelity National Financial; Black Knight, Inc.; and FIS, a global financial services company, which recently announced its $43 billion acquisition of secure payment processing company Worldpay that will further bolster the company’s significant local presence.

Other leading financial services companies including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, CIT and JPMorgan Chase also continue to increase their local operations as Jacksonville attracts more talent to the area and grows its labor force, which is happening at an exponential rate.

According to recently released U.S. Census Reports, the Jacksonville MSA is growing at a rate faster than United States. In 2018, Jacksonville’s metro population grew 2 percent over the previous year, making it the 6th fastest growing large metro of at least 1 million residents.