News

Jacksonville is the top U.S. relocation city for financial institutions as more and more banks cutting finance jobs on Wall Street. Known as nearshoring, the practice involves banks that move their operations away from expensive financial centers to more affordable and business-friendly locations, like Northeast Florida.

According to an article in Jacksonville Business Journal , the majority of these jobs are in areas such as cybersecurity, payment processing, record maintenance and regulatory compliance. Site consultant John Boyd of The Boyd Company says that Jacksonville’s lower real estate cost per square foot, less expensive labor costs due to lower cost of living, low tax rate, large financial services talent pool and competitive incentives, positions the region as an attractive and more profitable location for banks.

That, coupled with recent legislation which increases certain bank regulations to only apply to banks with greater than $250 billion in assets, allows banks with $50 billion in assets to experience growth. This tier of banks previously had to comply with those regulations.

In the last five years, Jacksonville has experience phenomenal growth in the financial services industry welcoming or expanding institutions such as Deutsche Bank, Macquarie, EY and Fidelity Investments and nearly 4,000 new jobs.

Jacksonville has been on the financial radar for some time as evidenced recently by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as well.