Financial services leading the way for AI skills demand
Australia’s financial services sector is a clear frontrunner for the integration of AI, PwC findings reveal, with these skills becoming more democratised across the broader jobs market.
PwC Australia’s 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer report discovered the financial and insurance sectors in Australia continue to be industry leaders in terms of demand for AI-related skills.
In 2024, over one in 10 (11.8 per cent) of financial and insurance job postings required AI skills, the professional services firm found.
Although this was down from a peak of 15.7 per cent in 2021, last year’s figure is still significantly higher than other industries across Australia. Fewer than 8 per cent of information and communication job listings demanded AI skills in 2024, while the remaining sectors all sat below 4 per cent.
“The financial and insurance industry was an early adopter of AI,” noted Tom Pagram, PwC Australia’s AI leader and global AI factory leader.
“What we’re seeing now is a shift from AI skills being centralised in certain sectors to a state where these types of roles and skills are now present in virtually every organisation in every industry.”
While recognising the financial and insurance industry’s appetite for AI skills did decrease from 15.7 per cent in 2021 to 11.8 per cent in 2024, PwC said this does not necessarily indicate these skills have become less sought after.
Instead, it indicates AI skills are becoming more democratised across the wider jobs market, the report wrote.
More broadly, PwC stated the adoption of AI is making workers more valuable, not less. Industries most able to use AI have seen productivity nearly quadruple since 2022 and are experiencing three times higher growth in revenue generated per employee.
The number of job postings calling for AI skills in Australia has also risen exponentially over the past decade from just 2,000 in 2012 to 23,000 in 2024.
“In the past 12 months, we’ve seen more and more evidence emerge of real productivity outcomes from business adoption of AI. And we’re continuing to see more proof points arise across all industries,” Pagram added.
Augmentable jobs – those where humans work alongside AI – jumped 47 per cent across all industries between 2019 and 2024, PwC found, with both AI-driven augmentation and automation driving job expansion in Australia.
Returning to the financial services sector, the rise of AI has been recognised as a “massive enabler” for Australia’s investment platforms, HUB24 and Netwealth recently said at the Morningstar Investment Conference.
In particular, HUB24 chief executive Andrew Alcock described AI as both a significant opportunity and threat to the future of Australia’s platforms.
“There’s a massive enabler there that will enable businesses – whether it be productivity, customer engagement, insights, and so forth. There is also a threat there in terms of how we leverage this technology. It’s a huge opportunity to do things more efficiently and achieve the purpose that we’ve all got,” Alcock said at the conference.
The CEO compared platforms’ adoption of AI to the process of building a plane while you fly it, with new technological changes rapidly unfolding each day.
“I say we’re trying to build an airplane in the sky. This thing’s flying and it’s changing while we’re building it. You’ve got to be careful where you invest and how you invest. You’ve got to put the safeguards or the guardrails around this data,” he explained.
“It’s really, really exciting and hopefully we can disrupt ourselves rather than being disrupted by big tech. I think we’re well on the way to do that.”
AUTHOR
Jasmine Siljic
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