The centre of gravity is moving up. Recruitment in financial services is now weighted towards higher-qualified roles, not entry-level positions. Government analysis found that, in the financial services sector, recruitment was generally for Regulatory Qualification Framework (RQF) 6+ roles rather than RQF 3 to 5 roles GOV.UK's Temporary Shortage List: Stage 2 report (2026).
In plain terms, RQF 6 sits at degree level. So lenders are reaching for people with deeper qualifications and specialist knowledge, the kind of skills open banking leans on hard. When money moves through shared data and real-time payment rails, the work gets more technical and more regulated at the same time.
That shift matters because it changes who you compete for. The pool of degree-level, regulated specialists is smaller than the pool of generalists, and open banking is only widening the appetite for them. The question for every lending team right now is simple: are you set up to find and secure those people quickly?
Open banking changes the product, so it changes the people. Lending decisions increasingly draw on live transaction data shared with permission, which creates demand for roles that can build, govern and interpret that data safely.
The move towards degree-level, RQF 6+ recruitment in financial services points to this pattern directly the GOV.UK Temporary Shortage List: Stage 2 report (2026). The roles pulling ahead tend to cluster in a few areas.
Notice the common thread. These are senior, specialist, regulated roles, exactly where the hiring weight has shifted. Junior task-based work is giving way to judgement-heavy roles that combine technical depth with regulatory awareness.
Start with the skills, not the job title. Open banking roles blend data fluency, risk judgement and regulatory knowledge, and the best candidates rarely fit a tidy template. Write your brief around the outcomes you need, then test for them.
A few moves make the difference:
Speed and clarity win here. When the people you want are in demand elsewhere, a slow process is the quickest way to lose them.
This is where we come in. Reed.ai searches a database of 15 million candidates to surface people who match your brief, including the data, risk and regulatory specialists open banking lending now depends on. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost.
If you're building a lending team for 2026, tell us what good looks like and we'll start surfacing matches. Let's find your next specialist, today.
