The Evolving Role of the Chief Risk and Compliance Officer in Modern Corporations

Most writing about the future of recruitment is generic — applicant tracking systems, video interviews, AI screening, the same trends that apply to hiring anyone for anything. What I want to set out here is narrower and more useful: what’s actually changing in the recruitment of senior finance leaders in the UK, and what it means for the businesses trying to hire them. Having led senior finance recruitment into UK businesses for two decades, I’ve watched the dynamics of this specific market shift markedly in the last few years — and the shift matters, because the businesses that understand it win the best finance leaders and the ones that don’t lose them. This is the future of finance recruitment as it actually affects UK employers, not a tour of recruitment technology.

The biggest shift: it’s a candidate’s market for the best profiles

The single most important change is that, for the most sought-after finance profiles, the balance of power has moved decisively towards the candidate. PE-experienced CFOs, scale-up CFOs with genuine fundraising track records, and financial controllers with PE-backed exit exposure are in short supply and high demand — and when one of them becomes open to a move, they are routinely fielding several competing conversations within weeks. This is a structural shortage, not a passing phase: the demand for finance leaders who have genuinely done the specific thing a business needs (raised the funding round, delivered the exit, run the regulated function) far outstrips the number of people who have actually done it. For employers, the implication is uncomfortable but important: for these profiles, you are not selecting from a queue of eager applicants — you are competing to win a scarce individual who has other options. Recruitment strategy built on the old assumption that the employer holds the power simply doesn’t work for the roles that matter most.

Why a fast, decisive process now beats the highest salary

Here’s the counter-intuitive part that catches many well-funded businesses out: in a candidate’s market, the business that wins the best finance leader is very often not the one offering the most money. It’s the one with the cleanest, fastest, most decisive hiring process. The best candidates read a slow, disjointed, junior-led process as a signal — about how the business makes decisions, how it values the role, and what it will be like to work there. I’ve watched businesses lose their preferred candidate not on salary but on process: they took two months and three rounds to decide while a competitor moved from first conversation to offer in a few weeks, engaged the candidate directly with the CEO and board, and articulated clearly why the role mattered. Speed, senior interviewer engagement, and a clear account of the role’s strategic importance now beat a marginally higher base salary for the candidates most worth having. The businesses that still run slow, cautious, committee-driven processes for scarce senior finance talent are quietly losing people they’d have hired five years ago.

The best finance leaders are passive, not applying

A second structural shift follows from the first: the finance leaders most worth hiring are almost never actively job-hunting. They’re employed, performing, and not scrolling job boards — which means the traditional advertise-and-wait model simply doesn’t reach them. Reaching the best senior finance candidates now depends on structured market mapping — systematically identifying who the right people are, whether or not they’re looking, and approaching them directly — rather than waiting for applications from whoever happens to be on the market. The candidates who apply to an advertised senior finance role are, by definition, the ones currently available; the ones a business really wants usually have to be found and approached. This is why the value of a specialist finance recruiter has, if anything, risen rather than fallen in the digital age: the technology has made it easier than ever to post a job and harder than ever to reach the people who aren’t responding to posts. Finding passive senior candidates is a relationship-and-research discipline, not an advertising one.

Fractional and interim have gone mainstream

The third shift UK employers should register is that fractional and interim finance leadership has moved from the margins to the mainstream. A growing business that needs genuine CFO or FD capability but not five days a week of it — or that needs senior finance leadership immediately, for a defined period, through a transition or a project — now has a well-established market of experienced people who work that way by choice. Even businesses that would historically have defaulted to a permanent hire increasingly weigh a fractional or interim appointment on its merits, because the economics and the availability have both shifted: you can now get a very experienced finance leader for the days you actually need them, at a price point that makes a permanent hire look like the wrong default rather than the obvious one. For employers, the takeaway is that the permanent-versus-fractional question is now a genuine strategic choice worth making deliberately, not a foregone conclusion — and the best finance leaders are increasingly available on either basis.

What this means for UK employers

Put the shifts together and the message for any business hiring senior finance talent is clear. For the profiles that matter most, assume a candidate’s market and compete accordingly — on the quality and speed of your process, the seniority of your engagement, and the clarity of the role, not on base salary alone. Reach the best people through targeted search rather than advertising, because they aren’t applying. Consider fractional and interim as real options rather than fallbacks. And above all, move decisively: hesitation is now the most common way good businesses lose good finance leaders. Running a sharp, senior-led hiring process is no longer a nicety — for scarce finance talent it’s the difference between hiring your first choice and settling for your third. This is exactly where a specialist finance recruiter earns their keep: not in posting the role, but in mapping the market, reaching the passive candidates, and running a process fast and cleanly enough to win them. A chartered, well-networked finance recruiter who knows this specific market is, in a candidate’s market, one of the most useful partners a hiring business has.

The mistakes that lose the best candidates

It’s worth naming the specific errors that cost businesses their preferred finance leader, because each is avoidable. The first is a slow process — letting weeks pass between stages while the candidate’s other options move faster. The second is junior-led interviewing — making a scarce, senior candidate spend early rounds with people well below the level of the role, which reads as a lack of seriousness. The third is indecision at offer stage — hesitating, re-opening settled questions, or making a tentative offer that signals doubt. The fourth is competing purely on base salary — assuming money alone wins, when the best candidates are weighing the role, the people, the decisiveness and the strategic importance at least as heavily. And the fifth is relying on advertising to reach people who aren’t looking. Every one of these is a process failure rather than a market failure — which means every one is within the hiring business’s control. Getting the process right is, in a candidate’s market, the single highest-leverage thing an employer can do to secure the finance leader it actually wants.

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Adrian Lawrence

Adrian Lawrence FCA is the founder of FD Capital and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). He holds a BSc from Queen Mary College, University of London, and has over 25 years of experience as a Chartered Accountant and finance leader working with private, PE-backed and owner-managed businesses across the UK. He founded FD Capital to connect growing businesses with the Finance Directors and CFOs they need to scale — and personally interviews candidates for senior finance appointments.