The wider UK market is cautious. The Low Pay Commission describes conditions as 'low hire, low fire', with weaker recruitment, only slight increases in redundancies, and vacancies sitting below pre-pandemic levels Low Pay Commission Report 2025, GOV.UK. In this climate, every finance hire carries more weight, because there are fewer of them.
Within financial services, the demand skews senior. When the government reviewed shortage roles, it found recruitment in the sector was generally for Regulatory Qualification Framework (RQF) level 6 and above, rather than the lower RQF 3 to 5 bands GOV.UK - Temporary Shortage List: Stage 2 report. Firms are hiring for judgement and qualification, not volume. That matters when the roles increasingly sit alongside AI agents that need human oversight.
AI is reshaping who firms hire and how they enter the profession. Apprenticeships have risen from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 GOV.UK / DSIT – AI Labour Market Survey 2025 report, a sign that employers are building AI-literate talent in-house rather than only buying it in. At the same time, the entry route is narrowing: Adzuna has recorded a 30% drop in UK entry-level job postings since ChatGPT launched, with graduates facing the toughest market since 2018 techUK – What's actually happening with entry-level and graduate jobs?.
The tasks that once trained junior finance staff, reconciliation, first-pass checks, routine reporting, are exactly the ones agents now handle. So the skill that rises in value is not doing the task. It's supervising it: reading what the agent produced, questioning it, and recording why the number is right. That record is the audit trail. In regulated finance, if you cannot show how a decision was reached, it may as well not have happened.
Specialist demand backs this up. Even in a subdued market, there are hotspots for AI, data and cyber security skills Computer Weekly (tech recruitment outlook 2026), and the professional, scientific and technical sector saw the largest volume increase in vacancies in late 2025 ONS – Vacancies and jobs in the UK: November 2025. Finance sits at the meeting point of all three.
Start by making the audit trail an explicit part of the role, not a hidden expectation. Write it into the job description: this person owns the record of every agent-assisted decision. Then test for it. Instead of asking what someone knows, ask them to walk you through a decision they had to justify after the fact. Good answers show a clear line from data to conclusion, with the reasoning captured as they went, not reconstructed later.
Look for three habits. First, scepticism: they check what an agent or system tells them rather than accepting it. Second, documentation as a reflex: they log decisions in the moment because they know a regulator, auditor or colleague may need to follow the trail. Third, plain communication: they can explain a technical decision to someone who was not in the room. These are learnable, so weigh attitude and evidence of good practice alongside formal qualifications.
Move quickly once you find the right person. In a low-hire market the strongest people still have options, and drawn-out processes lose them. Structure your interviews around real scenarios, agree your must-haves before you start, and keep feedback fast between stages.
We built our AI recruitment agent to find people who fit roles like these fast. It searches a database of 15 million candidates, ranks a shortlist in seconds, and lets you focus your time on assessing the judgement and accountability that agent-led finance demands. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. Tell Reed.ai about your role today and see your shortlist.
