In 2018, Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand enrolled over 7,000 candidates in their Professional Year program. By 2024, that figure had fallen to approximately 340.
That number deserves a moment. It means Australia is producing a fraction of the credentialled finance professionals it needs — and unlike a temporary skills shortage, this is not something the market corrects in a cycle or two. The pipeline itself has contracted. The projected shortfall of more than 10,000 accountants by 2026 is the consequence.
Financial services firms — accounting practices, bookkeeping firms, financial planning businesses, lending operations, fund managers — are feeling this directly. Back-office functions that should be running smoothly are understaffed. Senior professionals are doing work that sits well below their level because there is no one else to do it. Roles that would have filled in weeks are sitting open for months.
The firms that are solving this problem are not waiting for the market to correct. They are building offshore finance teams.
What actually goes offshore
The work that transfers most naturally to an offshore finance team is structured, process-driven and systems-dependent — which describes the majority of financial back-office operations.
Accounts payable and receivable processing, bank reconciliations, payroll administration, management accounts preparation, bookkeeping, financial data entry, month-end reporting, compliance documentation and KYC administration are all functions that Australian firms are running through offshore teams with consistent results. These are roles where the outputs are clearly defined, the quality is measurable and the systems — Xero, MYOB, NetSuite, QuickBooks — are accessible from anywhere.
For accounting practices specifically, offshore team members handle the technical preparation work: drafting financial statements, preparing BAS, processing payroll, managing client records. The onshore team reviews, signs off, maintains the client relationship and handles the advisory work that requires their judgement and their licence.
The compliance question
Financial services firms often raise compliance and regulatory exposure as a reason to pause on offshore. It is worth addressing directly, because the picture is clearer than most expect.
Back-office operational and administrative functions are not regulated activities under Australian financial services law. An offshore team processing reconciliations or preparing financial reports is not providing financial advice, holding an AFSL or conducting any activity that requires Australian regulatory authorisation. The work is administrative. The oversight sits with the licensed professional reviewing and approving it onshore.
What does not go offshore is the client-facing advisory relationship, complex tax planning, AFSL-licensed activities and regulated financial advice. Those remain with credentialled onshore professionals. The offshore team handles the engine room that supports that work.
The employment structure matters here too. A dedicated offshore team through a properly structured provider is employed under Philippine law by a locally registered entity. Your Australian business has a commercial services agreement with the provider — not an employment relationship with the offshore staff. That distinction carries real compliance significance, particularly for firms that have read the 2024 Fair Work Commission rulings.
What the model looks like in practice
A well-built offshore finance team is integrated, not isolated. Team members work Australian hours, operate inside the firm's existing systems, communicate directly with onshore colleagues through the same channels and report to the same managers.
The dedicated team model — where team members work exclusively for your firm rather than being shared across a BPO's client base — is what separates genuine operational integration from task-based outsourcing. A bookkeeper who knows your chart of accounts, your clients and your processes after three months is producing materially different output to one who picks up your work from a queue.
Sourcewiser builds dedicated teams in the Philippines across finance, accounting, bookkeeping, compliance administration and financial operations. The time zone alignment means offshore team members are online and available during Australian business hours, and the English proficiency and professional culture of Philippine finance graduates translates to low friction in day-to-day collaboration.
The practical business case
Cost reduction is real — offshore finance professionals can be up to 70% less expensive than onshore equivalents at comparable skill levels. But the firms reporting the highest satisfaction with their offshore finance teams are not measuring success primarily in cost terms.
The outcomes they cite most often are operational: backlogs cleared, client turnaround times reduced, onshore professionals finally working at the level they were hired for. Accounting practices that were turning away new clients because they lacked capacity to service them are growing again. Finance teams that were running overloaded are back to sustainable headcount ratios.
That is the real return — not just lower cost per role, but a function that can actually scale.
The talent shortage in Australian financial services is structural. The firms building offshore capability now are not reacting to a crisis — they are building a finance operation that does not depend on a talent market that has, by most measures, already failed to keep pace with demand.
Not sure where offshore fits in your finance function specifically?
Read: 7 signs your business is ready to build an offshore team.
Sources referenced: Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand Professional Year enrolment data; Jobs and Skills Australia 2025 Occupation Shortage List; Hays 2025 Skills Report; Robert Half 2025 Finance and Accounting Salary Guide; IBPAP Philippines IT-BPM Industry Report 2025.
