The wider UK labour market is cautious. Recruiters describe it as 'low hire, low fire', with weaker recruitment but only slight increases in redundancies, and vacancies now sitting below pre-pandemic levels the Low Pay Commission's 2025 report. That backdrop shapes how finance teams plan: they hire deliberately, and they hire where the return is clearest.
Even in a subdued year, specialist demand held up. Businesses took a careful approach to hiring in 2025, but there were clear demand hotspots for skills including AI, data, enterprise applications and cyber security Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook for 2026. Open banking sits right on top of those hotspots, because the work is data-heavy, integration-heavy and tightly regulated.
Vacancy growth is also concentrating in professional, technical fields. The largest volume increase in vacancies between August and October 2025 came in professional, scientific and technical activities, up by 5,000 the ONS Vacancies bulletin for November 2025. Finance teams building open banking capability draw from exactly that talent pool.
Open banking work clusters around a handful of skill areas, and demand for those skills is moving fast. Demand for AI skills rose by nearly 200 per cent in a year, with London accounting for 80 per cent of AI-related job postings and nearly two-thirds of all UK technology vacancies Accenture data reported by The Register. For finance teams, that means competing for the same data and AI talent that every other sector wants.
The connective roles matter too. IT business analysts, architects and systems designers, a group of around 193,000 workers, are among the occupations in critical demand, with three of five indicators flagged as critical in 2025 the Occupations in Demand 2025 release from GOV.UK. These are the people who translate open banking rules into working systems, so they sit at the centre of most finance hiring plans.
Security is the third pillar. Because open banking moves sensitive account data through shared interfaces, finance teams treat cyber hiring as core, not optional.
How teams build these skills is shifting as well. Growing your own open banking talent is becoming a realistic route, not a fallback.
Start by being specific. Specialist demand is concentrated, so a vague brief gets you a slow search and a weak shortlist. Name the interfaces, the data platforms and the regulatory frameworks you actually use, and you match faster against the people who fit.
Second, look wider than one city. London dominates AI and technology postings Accenture data reported by The Register, which means fierce competition there. Remote and regional hiring, plus a real apprenticeship route given how quickly apprenticeships are growing as a share of AI hires the DSIT AI Labour Market Survey 2025, opens up talent other teams overlook.
Third, move quickly and keep it fair. In a 'low hire, low fire' market the Low Pay Commission's 2025 report, strong candidates are often already employed and weighing their options. A short, structured process, clear on the role and the skills, respects their time and protects your offer.
This is where we help. We search 15 million candidates to surface people with the data, engineering, analysis and cyber skills open banking teams need, and we rank a shortlist in under 30 seconds. 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 open banking role you're building, and we'll start your shortlist today.
