Staff at major banks and some of the world’s biggest technology giants are increasingly leaving for fintech startups, new analysis shows.
Bankers, engineers, data scientists and sales staff from Wall Street, the City of London and Silicon Valley are among those joining an exodus that picked up speed during the pandemic, according to data compiled by
Departures from traditional banks, such as Goldman Sachs Group and HSBC Holdings, to fintech companies including
The growth in highly qualified staff switching to roles in new sectors comes as tight job markets allow many tech employees to change jobs, seeking higher salaries and more flexible routines.
“People have stopped and re-evaluated what’s important to them,” Lisa Simon, economist at Revelio, said in an interview. She cited a better work-life balance, improved pay and better career prospects as key drivers. Goldman Sachs saw 37 staff move to Coinbase, the largest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange, from January 2020 through April 2022. Another 21 Goldman staff joined the corporate credit card startup Brex, while 18 went to
To be sure, the numbers of staff leaving for fintechs and startups are small in comparison to the overall numbers employed in major financial services firms or Silicon Valley tech giants. Goldman employs 45,100 people worldwide. A representative for the bank declined to comment.
Elsewhere, some 28 workers have gone from
Morgan Stanley and HSBC made no comment. In emailed statements, Barclays Chief Operating Officer Mark Ashton-Rigby and a spokeswoman for Lloyds — which was recently ranked second in a LinkedIn list of the U.K.’s top 25 employers — each pointed to the importance their banks place on workplace culture.
“The number of people working in technology roles at Barclays has grown by more than 10% in the past two years which is testament to the compelling proposition we offer,” Ashton-Rigby said.
“There’s a war for talent,” said Christian Faes, co-founder of LendInvest and chair of the industry group Fintech Founders, citing high levels of regulation in traditional banking as well as “legacy processes, legacy people and technology.”
“We’re literally hiring people out of Facebook and Amazon, really high-tech engineers, and they don’t naturally gravitate toward banks with coding systems from the 1980s,” Faes said.
Coinbase alone has snagged 197 staff from Amazon, 97 from Alphabet, the parent company of Google, 73 from Microsoft and 72 from Meta Platforms, Revelio’s data show. Microsoft and Amazon declined to comment.
A spokesman for Coinbase said the company is “pleased that so many employees from top banks and tech giants want to rebuild the future of the crypto economy.” Meta and Alphabet didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Despite the shift into fintech there are already signs the trend is easing off. Inflation is darkening the global economic outlook, and a major tech selloff has put future funding rounds in doubt. Against that backdrop, the pace of staff movement from banking to fintech already appears to have slowed.
In that environment, some employees will choose stability over change. Crypto firms are looking especially risky: Coinbase’s market value has
“The basic story is we have customers and they don’t,” Zach Anderson, chief data and analytics officer at NatWest Group, said in an interview.
“If you want to have an impact on 19 million customers in a substantive way, you go to a bank.”
— With assistance from Matthew Boyle.
