The Financial Conduct Authority imposed more than £124 million in fines during 2025, with the majority linked to anti-money laundering and financial crime control failures. Nationwide Building Society was fined £44 million for transaction monitoring weaknesses. Barclays received a £39 million penalty for failures in monitoring high-risk corporate clients. Monzo, the digital bank, was fined £21 million after rapid customer growth outpaced its compliance infrastructure.
For UK payment firms and electronic money institutions, the message from the regulator has been direct: systems and controls must keep pace with business growth, and compliance leadership must be resourced to match.
That enforcement pressure is now visible in hiring data. According to Morgan McKinley and Vacancysoft, risk and compliance vacancies in UK fintech rose by approximately 26 percent year-on-year heading into 2026, marking a third consecutive year of growth. Financial crime and fraud-related roles are expanding fastest, and London accounts for nearly three-quarters of all fintech positions in the country.
Among the roles attracting the most attention is the Money Laundering Reporting Officer.
The MLRO as a strategic hire
Under UK anti-money laundering regulations, the MLRO is the individual responsible for overseeing a firm’s financial crime prevention framework, managing suspicious activity reporting to the National Crime Agency, and maintaining AML policies and procedures. The position requires FCA approval and, under the Senior Managers and Certification Regime, carries personal accountability – including, in severe cases, criminal liability under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
For payment institutions, the MLRO role sits at the intersection of compliance governance, client onboarding, transaction monitoring, and regulatory engagement. As UK payment firms scale into new jurisdictions and product categories, the expectations placed on this position continue to increase.
The FCA has made clear that it can take enforcement action for inadequate systems and controls even where no specific money laundering has been proven. That stance has made the quality and seniority of the MLRO appointment a more consequential decision than it was in the sector’s earlier growth phase.
Where compliance talent is coming from
One pattern emerging in UK fintech compliance hiring is the recruitment of professionals from adjacent regulated sectors. Energy trading, in particular, has produced compliance specialists whose experience in trade surveillance, sanctions screening, and cross-border regulatory coordination maps closely onto the demands of FCA-regulated payment firms.
This is visible in recent appointments across the sector. Breinrock, a Cyprus-headquartered global payments company, recently appointed Dagmara Dymczyk as Head of Compliance and MLRO for its UK operations. Dymczyk previously held compliance and monitoring roles at major energy trading companies as well as brokerage and financial service institutions alongside, with experience covering commodity trading compliance, market surveillance, and market abuse monitoring.
The appointment reflects a pattern of fintech firms drawing on professionals who have built compliance experience at scale in other regulated industries, then bringing that capability into the payments sector.
What the regulatory pipeline looks like
The enforcement and hiring trends are likely to continue. The FCA’s tightened safeguarding requirements for payment and e-money firms take effect from mid-2026, introducing stricter reporting, auditing, and reconciliation expectations. At the EU level, the full compliance obligations for high-risk AI systems in financial services under the EU AI Act apply from August 2026, adding human oversight requirements that further expand the scope of compliance leadership.
Meanwhile, the FCA is expected to become the single AML supervisor for professional services firms, with legislation anticipated in late 2026 and a go-live target of mid-2027. That expansion of the FCA’s remit is likely to increase demand for experienced compliance professionals further.
For payment firms operating across borders, the practical implication is straightforward: compliance leadership is no longer a cost to be minimised. It is a capability that directly affects a firm’s ability to maintain its regulatory authorisations, expand into new markets, and manage the operational complexity of cross-border payment activity.
