St. Pete is a magnet for financial services, including banking, insurance, wealth management, financial technology, investment management, and accounting. From Raymond James’s founding in the 1960s to ARK Invest and Dynasty Financial Partners today, financial services companies are finding the talent they need in the Sunshine City.
Find your fortune in St. Pete
St. Pete’s business-friendly economy, unbounded opportunity, and highly desirable lifestyle attract both established financial institutions and startups in the financial services industry. Over the last few years, the city’s economy has experienced substantial growth, with finance playing a crucial role. The financial services sector in the Sunshine City encompasses a broad range of services, including investment management, banking, wealth management, insurance and insurtech, and fintech. Companies in these industries are taking advantage of the region’s skilled workforce, favorable tax environment.
St. Pete’s outstanding quality of life is a huge draw for talent, including people who grew up or went to school here, employees relocating with their company, and new and experienced professionals looking for their next move in an appealing location.
Financial services companies are drawn to the region’s plentiful industry talent. There are more than 95,000 business and financial operations employees in the Tampa Bay region. Four generations of workers have propelled Raymond James, the largest private employer based in St. Pete, into one of the nation’s top financial houses.
Programs at local colleges and universities produce knowledgeable graduates, eager and prepared for the workforce through programs like:
Initiatives like the Student Managed Investment Fund at the University of South Florida’s Muma College of Business allow students to manage real money in real time, with a current fund of more than $1.7M. USF’s Fintech Center at the Kate Tiedemann School of Business & Finance brings together students, faculty, the business community, and fintech entrepreneurs to lead in the rapidly changing fintech-driven market sectors.
St. Pete and Tampa Bay continue to grow the financial sector
Dynasty Financial Partners, a tech platform for independent wealth managers, relocated to St. Pete in 2019, and since then has grown from 40 to 140+ employees and more than $110B in assets under management. Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest relocated here in 2021, and has opened the ARK Innovation Center and developed and implemented a middle school curriculum on innovation in the Pinellas County Public School system. Webull opened a regional hub in 2023, and then moved its global headquarters to the City. In 2025, it went public.
Their success is bolstered by programs like the USF/Tampa Bay Wave Fintech|X Accelerator, which draws a cohort of innovative and disruptive fintech startups each year for access to capital, connections, community, mentoring, and exposure.
St. Pete’s outstanding quality of life is a huge draw for talent, including people who grew up or went to school here, employees relocating with their company, and new and experienced professionals looking for their next move in an appealing location.
While housing costs have risen as St. Pete has grown in popularity, the area is significantly more affordable than many areas of the country, particularly larger cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago. Employees of all ages benefit from no state income tax and one of the country’s lowest tax rates overall. Affordability, a welcoming atmosphere, and gorgeous sunny days make St. Pete an easy decision for many folks.
The ability to move key people was an important consideration for Dynasty Financial Partners when executives visited St. Pete in advance of the company’s 2019 relocation.
Dynasty CEO Shirl Penney told Forbes,
“We focused on the impact such a move might have on our people and their families, including budget considerations, and on our ability to continue attracting the best and brightest in our industry.”
Botkeeper CEO founder Enrico Palmerino was interested both in attracting new talent and in capitalizing on existing talent.
“St. Pete was more artistic, romantic, and appeared to be going through a major boom that would be attractive for employees looking to relocate—this could only assist in my recruiting efforts,” he said.
In terms of talent already in St. Pete, he added,
“When you are building a company you want to build in a place where the talent pool is growing and where the market isn’t over saturated. Next you look at the population age to gauge the potential workforce, and Tampa Bay also has benefited from a migration of people out of Miami and up to Tampa Bay. With this migration have come a lot of engineers that were a part of the Miami crypto boom, which is a great pool to pull from for machine learning and AI engineering.”
Once you’re here, it’s not surprising to learn that people in their 20s and 30s are choosing the region as the place to launch and develop their careers.
Those in the business of money enjoy saving it in St. Pete, both professionally and personally. With the second-lowest state tax collection rate in the country, business benefits from the U.S.’s #4 state business tax climate in the country (behind only WY, SD, and AK), as well as from a low/no corporate income tax rate.
In addition, no state personal income tax makes the Sunshine City appealing to both those in established businesses and in startup founders pursuing a long term exit strategy.
Cost savings is often an impetus for financial services companies looking to relocate from high-tax or expensive cities. One thing companies considering St. Pete have in common is the desire to use the savings for more than just savings’ sake.
A prime driver is being able to reinvest in the business. Shirl Penney, founder and CEO of Dynasty Financial Partners, said when they relocated that,
“For a business that is growing quickly like us, being able to add operating margin by lowering expenses while also enhancing the quality of life for our employees was a win-win for everyone.”
Since moving, Dynasty has been able to invest in and launch new solutions for its business, including Model Select, a program that performs investment management functions for independent registered investment advisors in its network, and Dynasty Connect, a concierge service dedicated to understanding the objectives of private company employees and their families to help them identify an RIA or advisory firm well-suited to meet their investment needs.
Another is being able to give back to the community. Cathie Wood, founder and Chief Investment Office of ARK Invest, told a group of St. Pete EDC Investors that when they looked at the savings the company would realize from relocating from New York to St. Petersburg, it was the ability to have a large impact on the community that excited her employees about the move.
There are many places that are business-friendly with a good workforce, but only St. Petersburg offers museums, sports, performing arts, and a walkable city just steps away from Tampa Bay and minutes away from the country’s best beaches.
When Enrico Palmerino, founder of Botkeeper, an automated bookkeeping solution, was exploring cities in Florida for his new headquarters location, he found that,
“St. Pete was more artistic, romantic, and appeared to be going through a major boom that would be attractive for employees looking to relocate—this could only assist in my recruiting efforts.”
This idea is echoed by Shen Lu, chief operating officer of online trading platform Webull. Webull wanted to attract new employees in an in-person environment outside its New York headquarters, so it looked at a variety of locations for an additional office, including Austin, Atlanta, and North Carolina, and ultimately selected St. Pete. Webull purchased a building in St. Pete’s Gateway/Carillon District where it expects to have 300 Webull employees onsite. Lu said,
“We were sold by the appeal to the next generation workforce we want to attract. People who live here want to stay and people outside the area want to move here.”
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The St. Pete EDC is located at 111 2nd Ave NE, Ste. 610, St. Petersburg, FL 33701. Parking is available in the Plaza LAZ lot located next to the building; use GPS for 221 1st St N, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, which is near the entrance located on 1st Street N. between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.
Parking is $5/hour for the first 3 hours and $20 thereafter; it is a card payment facility only (no cash). Visitor parking is on the 1st and 4th floors; please note there is no handicapped access from the parking garage above the first floor.
There is also surrounding street parking; pay with ParkMobile or in the Sundial Garage located 2 blocks away.
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