1 in 3 small business owners in Australia has a migrant background
(SOURCE: CGU Migrant Small Business Report 2018, view report)
You’d never know it from who gets the funding.
Here’s what that actually looks like on the ground:
No local credit history. No collateral. No multi-generational safety net. No networks built up over decades.
Just the business idea, the work ethic, and a system that wasn’t designed with you in mind.
And the cruel irony? You need a loan to build your credit history. But you need a credit history to get the loan.
It’s not a motivation problem. It’s a structural one.
Government support programs exist — technically. But research shows they’re often inaccessible or so poorly communicated to culturally diverse communities that they may as well not exist.
So what happens? Migrant business owners get pushed into informal markets and survival-mode businesses. Smaller opportunities. Higher risks. Less visibility.
Meanwhile, funding flows to founders who look familiar to the people writing the cheques.
This isn’t a knock on individual investors. It’s a systems problem. And systems don’t change until enough people name them clearly.
Migrant entrepreneurs aren’t lacking ambition. They’re lacking access.
That’s what Migrant Wealth Builders exists to change.
Working on solving this problem too? Let’s chat.