The time it takes to fill an AI or digital role in financial services has nearly doubled as a skills shortage hits the industry, boosting the pay premium candidates can expect.

Some 61 per cent of UK financial services organisations surveyed by Amazon Web Services cite AI and digital skills shortages as the biggest barrier to expanding their use of AI, with the average time taken to fill a role rising from 5.5 months last year to nine months in 2026.

A big digital shift has been under way in financial services as firms work to upgrade their digital capabilities and introduce AI, with half of executives saying AI is fundamentally reshaping their businesses.

“What we’re seeing is demand for talent outpacing supply across the board, and the organisations deploying AI the most effectively are those who’ve also started building capability from within,” said Alison Kay, vice-president and managing director, UK and Ireland at AWS.

Salary premiums have gone up in tandem with demand, with finance companies willing to pay an average premium of 49 per cent for strong AI skills, equivalent to £26,300 a year, higher than the UK average of 41 per cent. 

Nearly half of financial services firms surveyed have a formal comprehensive AI strategy in place, putting them ahead of the UK average of just one in five businesses. Yet they lag behind the national average of AI implementation, with 16 per cent of financial services organisations beginning to develop AI capabilities, compared with a broader UK average of 24 per cent.

The survey of 1,000 private company and 500 public sector leaders, and an additional 1,000 workers, was undertaken by Strand Partners on behalf of AWS.

There is a big AI knowledge gap, with some 46 per cent of firms surveyed by the Bank of England recently saying they had only a “partial understanding” of the AI technologies they use, compared with 34 per cent who said they had a “complete understanding”.

For those looking to upskill, Kay said the AI skills in demand are not purely technical. “What hiring managers are looking for is people who can work with technology and apply their industry expertise and judgment.”

Most agree that change is coming with the development of agentic AI and the recent announcement by Anthropic over its latest AI model, Claude Mythos, which it said had identified vulnerabilities in every major operating system and web browser — the oldest of which is a bug that has existed for 27 years (which has since been fixed). 

Some have downplayed these risks, but others are concerned over what happens if this technology falls into the wrong hands. A third of UK finance firms are ready to adopt these next-generation technologies (higher than the wider UK average at 21 per cent) with 9 per cent having already deployed agentic AI and 18 per cent piloting it.

This is good news, said Kay. “The UK financial services industry is leading the wider economy on AI adoption, not just in terms of using AI, but also its most advanced use cases.”

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