London's financial heart beats to a new rhythm – not the usual hum of traders or analysts, but the sound of algorithms, neural networks and machine learning start-ups hiring faster than coffee is brewing in Canary Wharf.
According to A latest reportthe number of job vacancies in the city's financial sector increased by 9% in the third quarter of 2025, mainly due to the increase in the number of positions in the fintech and artificial intelligence industries.
It's not hard to see why. Fintech companies are placing an increasing emphasis on automation, predictive modeling and AI-based fraud detection – areas that promise big savings and even bigger bragging rights.
Some recruiters say the hunt for artificial intelligence talent has become “deadly,” with companies offering six-figure salaries and benefits for remote work just to lure the right people.
And you know what? I really can't blame them. When a single algorithm can process what once took an entire team of analysts a week to process, who wouldn't want that kind of efficiency on their payroll?
But let's be honest – there's a gold rush atmosphere here. Similar warning bells have rung on the other side of the Atlantic, where The Bank of England recently warned that the hype surrounding artificial intelligence may be inflating valuations beyond reason.
Sound familiar? It has shades of the dot-com bubble, except this time the buzzwords are “generative finance,” “synthetic data,” and “AI trading desk.”
If this bubble bursts, it will not only hit start-ups – it may disrupt the entire employment ecosystem in the city.
Meanwhile, the boom is not limited to the UK. Across Asia, the world's second-largest fintech market is experimenting with something completely different: agent payments.
Last week OpenAI has joined forces with India's NPCI and Razorpay to enable users to make purchases via conversational AI – just like chat, and the ChatGPT service pays.
It sounds futuristic, but give it six months and you'll probably be buying concert tickets by texting your virtual banker.
There is also a darker undercurrent. While AI is creating jobs, it is also quietly eliminating others. Just a few days ago a A venture firm from India has replaced its entire analyst team with the education system managing assets worth ₹6,000 crore.
It's impressive and amazing in equal measure. If a machine can handle finances better than an experienced human, what does that mean for the thousands of graduates still preparing for the CFA exams?
Still, the optimism runs deep. Hardware manufacturers like AMD make money on their own stocks increased by over 20% after signing a large contract with OpenAI to supply graphics processors for the next generation of financial applications requiring high computing power.
This kind of infrastructure play shows that artificial intelligence in finance is not a passing fad – it is an entire industrial ecosystem being built, from chips to cloud to compliance.
But as I walk through London's bustling fintech hubs, you can feel the tension. On the one hand, the excitement is contagious – the feeling that we are living in a moment when finances are reinventing themselves.
On the other hand, behind the glossy job advertisements lies a quiet anxiety. What if the very technology driving this boom decides tomorrow that it no longer needs us?
Call me a sentimentalist, but I still believe there's something uniquely human about money management – an instinct, an intuition, a gut feeling that no model can fully capture.
But as hiring managers flood LinkedIn with AI-focused job postings, it's clear that hunch is giving way to grid computing.
The city's next big banker may not wear a suit at all. It could just be humming quietly in a server rack somewhere near Old Street.
