If you plan finance hiring on last year's assumptions, you're already behind. The sharpest signal right now is where recruitment actually concentrates: demand sits at the higher end of the qualifications ladder. In the financial services sector, recruitment was generally for Regulatory Qualification Framework (RQF) 6+ roles, rather than RQF 3 to 5 GOV.UK's Temporary Shortage List Stage 2 report (2026).
Why does that matter for your plan? RQF 6+ maps to degree-level and professional roles: the regulated, specialist and judgement-heavy work that takes longer to source and harder evidence to verify. When live data shows demand clustering there, it tells you where to spend your attention, your budget and your speed.
The pressure isn't evenly spread. It builds in the technical and regulated corners of finance, and in the adjacent skills that keep those functions running. Cyber is a clear example sitting right alongside financial services: 70% of cyber firms reported at least one hard-to-fill vacancy the AI Labour Market Survey 2025 published on GOV.UK.
The same survey offers a note of optimism: the proportion of employers struggling to fill vacancies has declined the AI Labour Market Survey 2025. So the picture is improving overall, but specialist and security-linked finance roles stay stubborn. That gap between the easing average and the stuck specialisms is exactly where live data earns its keep.
General roles are getting easier to fill. Regulated, higher-qualified and cyber-adjacent roles are not. A static annual plan treats both the same. Live data lets you treat them differently: move fast on the scarce roles and stay measured on the rest.
Start with the roles the data flags as scarce, not the ones that feel urgent. If demand concentrates at RQF 6+ GOV.UK's Temporary Shortage List Stage 2 report (2026), write those briefs first and define the regulated competencies precisely. Vague briefs cost you most on the roles that are hardest to fill.
Good hiring in finance is really about sequencing and speed. Get the order right using the data, then move faster than the market on the roles where supply is thin.
This is where we come in. We search a database of 15 million candidates to surface the right people for your scarce, regulated and specialist finance roles, then manage the process end to end. We return a ranked shortlist in under 30 seconds, contact matched candidates in under a minute, and can book an interview in under three minutes, so you move at the speed the data demands. 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. Tell us the role that's hardest to fill and we'll show you who's out there today.
