BFSI Hiring in 2026 - Why Compliance Roles are Becoming Harder to Hire Than Tech
For years, BFSI hiring followed a familiar pattern. Need more people? Hire engineers.
Sanchita Paul
For years, BFSI hiring followed a familiar pattern.
Need more people? Hire engineers. Data folks. Product teams. Problem solved.
That hiring playbook doesn't work anymore.
According to Economic Times, for FY25-26, hiring growth in the BFSI sector is estimated at 8.7%, with recruitment intensity forecast to increase further, reaching 10% by FY30.1 This growth is primarily driven by digitization, fintech adoption, and financial inclusion. But beneath that headline growth sits a very specific pain point. The hardest roles to fill aren't tech anymore. They're compliance, risk, AML, fraud, and regulatory roles, especially because of the emergence of AI usage and cybercrimes.
And the gap is growing faster than most leaders expected. So, in 2026, BFSI recruiters need to rethink their recruitment and hiring strategies to hire their most demanding roles.
Why is Hiring for Compliance Roles Difficult in BFSI?
Expansion in Tier-2 and Tier-3 Cities
BFSI hiring expansion isn't limited to metros anymore. Nearly half of new BFSI roles will come from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities as banks and fintech push deeper into underserved regions.
That's great news for financial inclusion. But this is also a compliance headache.
Every new branch, lending operation, or digital product brings local KYC rules, regional regulations, language nuances, and audit requirements.
With this rapid expansion, suddenly, compliance is not a centralized function sitting at HQ. It's distributed, contextual, and deeply local. Besides, there's a lack of trained professionals in compliance roles.
Strict Regulatory Mandates
Industry reports show BFSI firms are doubling down on AML, KYC, fraud, and risk-policy roles as regulatory scrutiny tightens.2 That's why skills like AI-based fraud analytics, identity governance, and compliance monitoring are now among the highest-paid BFSI skills, often commanding 1.5 to 4 times the salary of a typical IT role.3
Slow Skill Adoption
The BFSI sector is evolving at an unimaginable speed - new regulations, digital products, tools, and compliance expectations are changing almost every year. But skill development in compliance simply doesn't move at the same pace.
The core issue is that compliance expertise is built through lived exposure - audits, regulatory interactions, investigations, and real-world judgment. That takes time. As a result, the lag between demand and readiness is prominent, requiring recruiters to adopt long-term problem-solving strategies for hiring compliance professionals.
Thin Talent Pipeline
Unlike tech roles, compliance doesn't benefit from a massive early-career funnel.
There aren't enough structured academic programs for AML, fraud analytics, or regulatory technology. Most compliance professionals build expertise slowly, through years of audits, casework, and regulatory exposure.
That makes the hiring pipeline limited by default.
Even when BFSI firms offer higher pay, the supply just isn't there. Bank Director reports show more than half of large banks struggle consistently to recruit qualified compliance staff.4
Why Over-Focusing on Tech Made Things Worse?
There's a quiet irony here.
As BFSI raced toward digitization, many firms poured resources into hiring engineers, data scientists, and AI teams-sometimes at the expense of compliance training and workforce planning.
The result? Tech teams grew fast. Compliance pipelines didn't.
Now, this imbalance has exposed a flaw in past recruitment and hiring strategies, showing that without strong governance, even the best digital products become regulatory liabilities.
How BFSI Recruiters Can Start Closing the Compliance Talent Gap
BFSI recruiters who continue to rely on traditional, volume-driven hiring models will struggle to compete for scarce, high-trust compliance talent. Closing this gap requires a fundamental shift in recruitment and hiring strategies, focusing on how compliance roles are sourced, screened, and nurtured.
1. Move from Volume Hiring to Capability-First Hiring
Compliance hiring cannot be treated like tech or sales hiring.
Instead of optimizing for speed and applicant volume, BFSI hiring must prioritize:
- Proven regulatory exposure (AML, KYC, audit, DPDP, RBI/IRDAI norms)
- Contextual experience (banking vs NBFC vs fintech compliance)
- Judgment, documentation rigor, and risk awareness, not just keywords
Redesign compliance JDs to reflect decision-making responsibility and regulatory accountability, not just years of experience. This critical problem-solving strategy immediately filters out misaligned applicants and improves hiring quality.
2. Build Long-Term Compliance Talent Pipelines
One of the biggest reasons compliance roles are harder to hire than tech is reactive hiring. Most BFSI firms start searching after regulatory pressure peaks.
What recruitment and hiring strategies work better:
- Maintain always-on talent pools for AML analysts, compliance officers, and risk specialists
- Track candidates even when roles are not immediately open
- Re-engage past candidates as regulations evolve
Talentpool's position sets help recruiters build role-specific talent pipelines even after roles are closed. These ready-to-hire talent pipelines include past interaction so that recruiters can move fast during demand spikes.
3. Integrate Verification and Compliance Screening Early in the Funnel
For compliance roles, background checks and credential verification cannot be last-step formalities.
Actionable problem-solving strategies:
- Introduce early-stage verification signals (prior regulatory exposure, certifications, reporting experience)
- Flag roles that require enhanced due diligence at the sourcing stage itself
- Partner closely with compliance and risk teams during hiring, not after onboarding
4. Re-skill Internal Talent Before Looking Outside
External hiring alone will not solve the compliance talent shortage.
Many BFSI organizations already have:
- Operations staff with regulatory exposure
- Risk analysts who can be trained into compliance roles
- Tech professionals who can move into RegTech and compliance automation
Work with L&D teams to identify internal mobility pathways into compliance roles. Recruiters should act as talent architects, not just talent buyers.
5. Position Compliance Roles as Career Accelerators
Compliance is often marketed internally as a "risk control" function. This impacts hiring.
What today's candidates want to hear:
- Exposure to regulators and board-level decision-making
- Career paths into CRO, governance, or policy leadership roles
- Opportunities to work on RegTech, automation, and AI-driven compliance
Recruiters who tell this story attract stronger, more motivated candidates-especially mid-career professionals.
6. Adapt Innovative Recruitment Tech to Reduce Noise and Increase Trust
Compliance roles suffer from two major hiring problems:
- Resume flooding with underqualified or misrepresented profiles
- Limited recruiter bandwidth for deep screening and verification
This is where modern recruitment technology like Talentpool recruitment software becomes critical.
How Talentpool Helps BFSI Recruiters Hire Compliance Talent Better
Talentpool is purpose-built to solve the exact challenges BFSI recruiters face today:
- Curated, Role-Specific Talent Pools: Recruiters can build and maintain dedicated pipelines for compliance, AML, risk, and audit roles, without restarting sourcing every time a role opens.
- Strong Candidate Traceability & Data Integrity: Every candidate profile, interaction, and screening outcome is preserved, critical for compliance hiring where auditability matters.
- AI Scoring to Combat Resume Spam: By scoring candidates against role-defined compliance parameters, AI scoring ensures objective, explainable shortlisting. Recruiters bypass resume overload and focus only on relevant, highly accurate profiles.
- Faster, More Confident Hiring Decisions: Recruiters can evaluate candidates across historical interactions, not just a single resume, to ensure more confident hiring decisions.
Want to see how Talentpool can help? Schedule a demo now!
Summing It Up
By 2026, BFSI won't just compete on who builds the best tech. It'll compete on who governs it best.
Compliance, risk, and regulatory expertise are becoming business-critical skills, not back-office functions. And that's why it's now harder to hire than tech. The organizations that accept this early, and build for it, will scale with confidence.
References
4. https://www.bankdirector.com/article/banks-are-struggling-to-find-compliance-officers/)
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Sanchita Paul
Sanchita Paul is a key member of the Talentpool team, bringing extensive experience in talent acquisition and recruitment technology to help companies build better hiring processes.
