Financial services is one of the UK's most skills-hungry sectors, and the pattern of demand tells its own story. Recruitment here is concentrated at the senior, specialist end of the market. According to a GOV.UK Temporary Shortage List report, recruitment in financial services was generally for Regulatory Qualification Framework (RQF) 6+ roles, rather than RQF 3 to 5. In plain terms, employers are reaching for degree-level and above, not entry-level.
That skew towards senior hires matters. When the roles you need sit higher up the qualification ladder, the pool of people who can do the work is smaller, and competition for them is sharper. Payments firms feel this acutely, because every new product, rail or compliance rule needs people who already understand the regulated environment they're working in.
Fintech sits at the point where financial services meets technology, so it pulls on two talent pools at once. On the technology side, pay signals show just how competitive the market is. The Migration Advisory Committee's review of IT and engineering professionals found that top technology firms can pay sizeable wages to skilled migrants, leading to wages far above the salary threshold, while pay for engineering professionals on the Skilled Worker route is broadly in line with the UK average.
Read those two findings together and the picture is clear. Fintech employers want senior, regulated financial-services expertise, and they want scarce, high-value technology skills, often in the same team. Payments leads the shift because it needs both at once: people who understand compliance and risk, and people who can build and scale the systems that move money safely.
Start by being precise about the level you actually need. With so much demand sitting at RQF 6+ as the GOV.UK shortage list report shows, a vague job description wastes everyone's time. Define the regulatory knowledge, the technical skills and the seniority up front, then separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves.
Speed and precision work together. The faster you can surface the right shortlist and get people into conversation, the more likely you are to land a scarce senior hire before a competitor does.
This is exactly where we come in. We search a database of 15 million candidates and use AI to match and rank the right people for your role, so you spend your time talking to strong, relevant shortlists rather than sifting applications. 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're hiring for payments or wider fintech roles, start a search with us today and see your shortlist take shape.
