The ground is shifting under everyone who hires in financial services. AI is no longer a side project, it sits inside the daily work of analysts, advisers and risk teams. The scale of the change is real: across all AI-related occupations, the net change in jobs ranges from roughly 696,000 in one scenario to 1,072,000 in another, with replacement demand sitting between 3,077,000 and 3,193,000 jobs the UK government's AI Skills for Life and Work projections. That tells us demand is not just for net-new roles, it is also about replacing and reshaping the ones we already have.
Momentum is building fast. During London Tech Week 2025, the UK government announced a partnership to upskill 7.5 million UK workers in essential AI skills by 2030, equivalent to around 20% of the UK workforce techUK's coverage of London Tech Week 2025. For financial-services firms, that is a signal: the talent you want tomorrow is being trained today, and the way people enter the sector is changing too.
The routes into AI work are broadening, and that matters for how you build a team. Apprenticeships have risen from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 the GOV.UK AI Labour Market Survey 2025. In a sector that has long leaned on degrees and prior firm names, that is a meaningful opening. It means you can grow capability in-house, not only buy it in.
The pattern of adoption is instructive too. Sectors like retail and logistics were already actively integrating AI to improve customer insights and streamline functions such as inventory management and supply chains GOV.UK AI adoption research. Financial services follows a similar logic: agents are strongest at the repetitive, data-heavy tasks. They summarise the portfolio. People read the room, weigh the risk and set the strategy.
Start by separating the two kinds of work. Agents are built to summarise: they pull together positions, flag anomalies, screen a large field and surface the people worth talking to. People are built for judgement: they decide what a client actually needs, where the risk sits, and which direction to take. When you hire, test for the human skills that agents cannot replicate. Can this person interpret an ambiguous situation? Can they explain a decision to a regulator or a nervous client?
Then widen your definition of a strong hire. With apprenticeships now a serious route into AI work, you can recruit for curiosity and trainability, not just for a finished CV. Build structured interviews around real scenarios. Keep screening fair and consistent. And treat speed as a feature: the best people in a tight market move quickly, so a slow process loses them before the first conversation.
This is exactly the split we build around. We let the agent do the summarising: searching 15 million candidates, ranking a shortlist and handling the first contact, so your people keep the part that matters, the judgement and the strategy. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost, through Reed.ai. If you are hiring in financial services and want your team setting strategy rather than screening CVs, let's talk.
