Could Tampa Bay, Florida Become a Financial Center?

Earlier this week Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein mentioned Salt Lake City and Dallas as growing financial centers. Now you may be able to add Tampa Bay, Florida to that list.

Three financial firms, including the New York-based Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, have filed plans to create 1,000 jobs in and around Tampa.

The Florida city is already home for the national brokerage firms, Edward Jones and Raymond James, as well as Brown & Brown, a nationwide insurance company. Plus, JPMorgan Chase, Capital One, Citigroup, New York Life and USAA have operations jobs in the Tampa area.

According to the Tampa Bay News, the Tampa City Council and the Hillsborough County Commission are reviewing applications today from the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), Maitland-based Digital Risk, and a third unnamed company.

A spokesman for DTCC says the firm is still deciding whether to create these 255 new jobs in either Tampa, Florida or Jersey City, N.J. He also said the new jobs would reportedly pay more than $80,000 a year. That would go a lot farther in Tampa than it would in Jersey City since it is twice the average salary in Hillsborough County, according to the Tampa Bay News.

Tampa looks to be the front runner since DTCC already has 530 employees there, which is about one fifth of the firm's global workforce. The company provides securities processing for many Wall Street firms and clears more than $1 trillion a day.

Digital Risk, which does analysis for mortgage lenders, plans to create 600 new jobs in the Tampa area, according to a spokeswoman. The third firm whose name was not provided, plans on creating 110 new jobs in Tampa.