Toronto's FinTech Ecosystem: 74 Firms Reshaping Canada's FinServ Space

Canada has been recognized as one of the best markets to build and test innovative FinTech solutions, and the province of Ontario, in particular, has among the highest concentrations of tech firms outside Silicon Valley, thanks in part to cheaper costs and the cluster of Toronto and Waterloo area universities producing engineers and developers.

In fact, Toronto hosts ~12,000 financial firms and 360,000 finance workers and makes up 37% of Canada’s total GDP, which makes the province a strong economic driver for the nation. Toronto has also been noted as North America’s second-largest financial services hub after New York because if it’s FinTech Ecosystem.

According to the Toronto Financial Services Alliance (TFSA), with 50% of the country’s approximate 60,000 FinTech employees, the Toronto region offers one of the most highly educated workforces in the developed world. TFSA also emphasizes the hallmarks of Toronto as the capital of Canada’s financial services industry – Toronto’s FinTech Ecosystem is the headquarters for:

• Two of the world’s largest life insurers;

• Three of the world’s top 25 banks;

• 123 financial securities firms;

• Three of the top 60 global pension funds;

• Nine of Canada’s top 10 mutual fund companies;

• Third-largest equity exchange (TSX) in North America and the seventh in the world.

The Toronto region is also the Canadian headquarters for some of the world’s leading wireless and telecom companies, including Cisco, Ericsson and Alcatel, and for world-leading software and data analytics companies such as HP, IBM and Microsoft.

Companies whose technologies support the financial services sector have found an ideal North American location in Toronto. More than 13,000 Tech companies in the Toronto region, from startups to global technology leaders, deliver hardware, software, and communications services to the North American and global financial services industry, the Alliance notes.

Toronto’s facilitative environment served as a foundation for growth and development for a vibrant FinTech ecosystem, representing the hottest segments and successful players. According to TFSA, Toronto’s FinTech sector is in advantageous position also due to a broadly based system of R&D tax credits from the federal and provincial governments. These can reduce the gross cost of C$100 in R&D to C$42 to C$54 depending on the size and type of company.

Strong support from federal and local governments, stable financial sector, access to the top talent among other factors lay a ground for the following set of FinTech innovators to expand and reimagine the financial services industry.

Toronto’s FinTech Ecosystem

ASAPP Online Solutions is an omnichannel account origination and loan auto-decisioning solution for retail and small business banking. The company brings digital onboarding, deposit account origination, and lending origination & decisioning t ...