Hiring trends in financial services: the 2026 Australian read

Where the data comes from

I run a quarterly State of the Market report built from live data gathered across hundreds of Australian finance professionals on retention, hiring and AI adoption, plus a yearly salary guide.^[1] The Q2 2026 edition polled over 350 finance professionals on retention, hiring patience, team rebuilding and AI adoption.^[2] Every number on this page comes from that survey or from searches I have run. Where I do not have data, I have left the section out rather than borrow someone else's.

Trend one: retention risk is the story of 2026

The headline number is uncomfortable if you employ finance people. 52% of finance professionals across Australia said they would walk away from their current role today, regardless of what their employer offered to keep them.^[3] That last clause is the important part. This is not a pay problem you can counter-offer your way out of. Half the function has already decided, and money is not the lever.

Read alongside a quiet advertised market, that produces a strange shape: few visible roles, and a very large number of people willing to move for the right one. It is a market that rewards approach over advertisement, on both sides. 2025 was already tough for jobseekers, with heavy competition for fewer roles, longer interview processes and constant talk of budget constraints.^[4] The scarcity is in good roles, not in good people.

Trend two: roles are being redesigned, not refilled

This is the biggest structural change and the least discussed. 81% of finance leaders now pause to reassess a role before replacing a resignation, with only 5% replacing like-for-like immediately.^[5] Almost nobody just backfills any more. The seat gets rethought, and often the scope changes materially before anyone is approached.

The companion behaviour is interim cover. 48% of businesses are using interim cover while continuing a permanent search for senior finance roles.^[6] Those two findings belong together: if you refuse to compromise on the permanent hire, you need the seat covered while you hold that line. The practical effect is longer, better-considered searches with someone competent in the chair, rather than a rushed replacement.

If interim cover during a permanent search is the decision in front of you, I set out when it is the right call and what it costs here.

Trend three: AI is inside the function now, not next to it

86% of finance teams are engaging with AI in some form, with one-third having moved past experimentation into active implementation or full business as usual.^[7] That is a real adoption curve, not a survey artefact. What it changes for hiring is the skill mix you should be screening for, particularly at the first finance hire level.

The practical version looks unglamorous. An Australian scale-up controller refreshes their board pack every Monday with a single instruction, then checks revenue, cash and ARR against Xero and adds commentary, which removes the manual rebuild entirely.^[8] That is the shape of useful AI in finance: it collapses preparation time, it does not replace judgement. The rule worth holding a candidate to is that AI produces a first draft, not a final answer, and a qualified person checks every number and signs off anything reaching a board, investor, auditor, client or regulator, so accountability stays human.^[9]

There is a sector nuance worth naming. In banking, where credibility and trust are core, those same attributes are often the major resistance to AI implementation.^[10] Adoption in a fintech and adoption in a bank are not the same trend, and expecting a candidate from one to have the other's experience is a common screening error.

Trend four: the advertised market is the weakest signal

Job ad volumes are widely used as a market barometer and they are a poor one at senior level. Finance Manager roles have been drying up across Australia on job ad data,^[11] and the top end of the market feels quiet,^[12] yet searches still close fast when the network is there. I have delivered a shortlist of five met and assessed CFO candidates within six business hours, which does not happen from a job board or a generalist recruiter, it happens when the trust is already earned.^[13]

Candidate behaviour compounds this. Candidates have been applying for roles more junior than their previous level, moving CFO to FD, FD to FC and FC to FM,^[14] so ad response volume tells you nothing about the quality or fit of who applied. If you are planning headcount off job ad data alone, you are reading the shallowest part of the market and calling it the weather.

If the conclusion you are drawing is that you need a mapped search rather than an advert, the mechanics are set out here.

What to do with this if you are hiring in 2026

Three things. Assume your current finance team is at risk and act accordingly, because half of them would leave today regardless of money. Redesign the seat before you refill it, since almost everyone else is, and interim cover buys you the time to do it properly. And hire through approach, not advertisement, because the people you want are in the 52% and they are not reading your ad.

On the search itself, hold whoever runs it to numbers: a shortlist in about five working days from the brief, around fifteen working days from brief to signed, roughly 75% of shortlisted candidates proceeding to interview, and an 85% two-year retention rate on placements.^[15] In a market where a redesigned role costs six months to get right, retention is the only trend number that matters at the end.

Common questions