COLORADO, USA — Colorado Economic Development Commission members offered $9.2 million to three companies to bring a combined 534 jobs here, including to an Australian fintech firm looking at setting up a U.S. headquarters in the Denver metro area as it expands services to this country.
The three firms being chased by state officials represent three different industries — fintech, bioscience and business-to-business payment technology — but all three are in sectors identified as priorities for expansion. And at least one of them also is looking to hire nearly 40% of its new staffers to work in remote locations off of the Front Range, which the EDC has put a special emphasis on recruiting in the past year.
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That company is Finder, an Australian fintech company of 450 workers — including three now in Colorado — that offers users an app-based financial comparison tool for making decisions about personal purchases ranging from home loans to insurance products to shopping deals. More than 10 million users per month in 80 countries now use the app, and the 15-year-old company is just now looking to launch in the United States.
Finder officials are looking at the Denver metro area, Utah, Texas and North Carolina as potential American headquarters locations, and they expect to hire 198 project managers, software engineers and other workers at an average annual wage o $84,222. But they identified 74 of those workers as being folks who could work remotely — the same way that nearly 45% of the company’s employees now work — and could be eligible for additional $5,000-per-job incentives through the Location Neutral Incentives (LONE) program.
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