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It's time to triple down on the Customs Broker conversation. Why? the topic dominates any discussions with forwarders when we catch up with that hold a corporate licence. This is where the shortages are in the market are, the lack of available talent is starting to strain team with both manpower and margins.

Previous articles suggested the time was coming, now it’s time to call it— the straw has broken, now we wait to see what that means. Will lodgement fees rise or Broker salaries first. Given the demand in the market for Brokers, I feel it will be the former. 

Let me add some context to the why using the Australian Border Force (ABF) own findings. The latest ABF, Good Compliance Update, 2024-1 data tells us. Focusing on the age profile first, some insights about the depth and demographic distribution of brokers:

Aging Workforce:

• A significant proportion of brokers fall within the older age categories, particularly in the 50-59 and 60-69 age ranges. Specifically, there are 515 brokers aged 50-59 and 441 aged 60-69, representing a large segment of the total workforce.
• This suggests that many experienced customs brokers may retire soon, which could lead to a shortage if younger replacements do not enter the profession.

Low Representation of Younger Brokers:

• There are relatively few customs brokers in the younger age brackets, with only 8 brokers aged 20-29 and 182 aged 30-39. These 190 Brokers under 40 represent only 12.5% of Licenced Brokers
• This indicates a potential lack of younger professionals entering the field, raising concerns about future workforce sustainability. With limited opportunities for entry level, doc runner, compiler, classifier roles for people to learn the craft there is no pipeline
• Overall, the age profile suggests that the customs brokerage industry may face a talent gap in the coming years unless efforts are made to attract and train younger professionals.

Diving further into the data, a few further observations from the document.

Customs Broker Licence Renewals:

• 2024 was a customs broker licence renewal year for all licensed brokers (occurs every three years).
• Customs brokers who did not renew their licences by 30 June 2024 lost their licenses.
• Licences not renewed include 63 nominee licences, 39 corporate licences, and 1 sole trader licence.
• In contrast to previous renewal years, there was an increase in unintentional non-renewals, primarily due to administrative issues.

Reasons for Non-Renewals:

• The Customs broker did not pay the renewal invoice.
• The renewal invoice was paid with incorrect information, or the required documents were not submitted.
• Some brokers faced third-party software or identity management issues.

Customs Licensing Team:

• They worked with the industry to support renewals after the due date and found that 5% of brokers unintentionally failed to renew.

Active Customs Brokers:

• Of 1,539 licensed nominee Customs brokers, 275 did not lodge an FID (Formal Import Declaration) in 2024.
• Some of these brokers may still be employed and performing activities related to customs but are not counted as active due to non-lodging of FIDs.

Geographic Variation:

• The largest number of brokers is concentrated in New South Wales (705 brokers), followed by Victoria (474 brokers), while Northern Territory and Tasmania have very few brokers (10 and 11, respectively).
• The age distribution within each state follows a similar trend, with older age groups dominating across most regions.

Let’s keep the discussion moving, I look forward to discussing this as we lead into the end of another busy year.

Source: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.abf.gov.au/trade-and-goods-compliance-subsite/ComplianceNewsletters/goods-compliance-update-october-2024.pdf

To discuss further, feel free to reach out to Andrew Bennett on 0409 137 399 / abennett@veritasrecruitment.com.au