If you’ve noticed that the banking industry in 2025 bears little resemblance to how it looked before, you’re not alone. While things were pretty familiar at the start of 2020, a period of rapid, tech-fueled evolution, accelerated by the global pandemic, has reshaped how financial institutions operate and compete.
Customers now expect seamless, on-demand digital services, and this has enabled the rise of online-only banks. At the same time, changing customer preferences have caused other banks to shift their strategies. Now, in 2025, it’s suddenly clear there are three different types of banks competing for business: local, national, and online-only.
So, what does this mean for hiring and banking careers? Has the demand for digital banking jobs substantially changed financial services hiring strategies? What are the 2025 fintech job trends? Let’s take a look and decode the 2025 banking job market.
Local Banks: Relationship-Based Hiring
Amidst the rise of digital services, local banks are doubling down on their core differentiator: people. The hiring strategy for these institutions centers around their community ties, as they prioritize roles that demonstrate their personalized service and active community engagement.
However, that doesn’t mean technology isn’t on the radar for local banks. They’re also hiring for tech talent, but as part of hybrid skill sets. The ideal candidates are as comfortable demonstrating a new mobile banking feature as they are with traditional services.
National Banks: Scale and Specialization
National banks have tremendous resources available to them, which enables them to scale specialized services in ways that digital and community-based competitors can’t. However, they also need talented individuals to develop these services, and there is strong demand across the financial sector for individuals with such skills. This includes specialists in compliance, cybersecurity, and risk management to protect the bank from financial and digital threats.
In addition, the rise of AI in financial services is felt acutely at national banks. These are the institutions that have the most AI deployments in 2025, automating routine processes and augmenting employee decision-making. The high demand for AI skills across all industries is placing pressure on major banks to upskill their existing workforces. If recruiters can’t land the specialized talent needed, at least current employees can learn new skills and grow with the technology.
Online-Only Platforms: Tech-First Talent
As you might expect, the hiring requirements at online-only banks and fintech platforms are decidedly tech-first. The most sought-after candidates are not traditional bankers but software engineers, user experience (UX) designers, data scientists, and AI or machine learning specialists. While an online-only platform’s headcount may be smaller than that of traditional banks, compensation for these niche technical roles is highly competitive. This type of institution sees big tech firms as their competitors as much as other banks.
Other hiring priorities at online banks support their goal of expanding the technological frontier of finance. Therefore, they need the talent to build more sophisticated AI-driven credit models or to deploy advanced, real-time fraud detection systems. The goal is to build the perfect digital products that redefine the bank-customer relationship, which requires different skills than those of a traditional finance worker.
What It Means for Job Seekers and Recruiters
While the hiring needs for all three types of banks diverge somewhat, technology is a common thread that unites them. Across the financial services industry, tech-savviness has become an increasingly expected skill for entry-level professionals. All three bank types need talent for fintech-adjacent roles. A data analyst, for example, could work on community outreach strategies at a local bank, develop enterprise-level risk models at a national bank, or build customer-facing credit algorithms for an online platform.
The key for job seekers is to align one’s skills with the institution’s specific mission and scale. For recruiters, the one-size-fits-all approach to banking talent is obsolete. Hiring success depends on an understanding of the cultural and structural differences between a recruiter’s institution and other types of banks. Sourcing a candidate for a fast-paced, equity-driven fintech startup demands a different strategy than finding a compliance specialist for a heavily regulated national bank.
Navigating a Changed Talent Market
Whereas banking used to be a monolithic industry, it has evolved into a three-pronged industry throughout the 2020s. One-size-fits-all hiring no longer works. From the community-focused relationship builder at a local bank to the cybersecurity specialist at a national institution to the UX designer at an online-only platform, the roles are as diverse as the banks themselves.
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