Moving from banking to fintech: segments, equity and how to judge a company

Fintech is the destination a large share of finance professionals now consider, and the one they are worst equipped to evaluate. “Should I move to fintech?” is not one question — a Series C payments infrastructure company, a licensed neobank, and a listed processor with thirty thousand staff are three different employers with different risks and different pay structures. This guide covers the segments, which banking skills actually transfer, how equity compensation really works, and how to judge whether a given company is a good bet.

The segments

• Payments and processing (Adyen, Stripe, Checkout.com, Worldline, Global Payments). The largest and most mature segment. Real revenue, real margins, and the deepest need for people who understand scheme rules, settlement, treasury and fraud.
• Neobanks and digital lenders (Revolut, Monzo, Starling, N26, Nubank, Chime). Licensed or partially licensed, therefore regulated, therefore hiring the same compliance and risk functions a bank does — usually with more scope per person.
• Banking infrastructure and BaaS (Thought Machine, Mambu, Solaris, ClearBank, Form3, 10x). Selling core systems and rails to banks. The most technical segment, and the one where ex-bank domain knowledge is worth the most because the customer is a bank.
• Wealth, brokerage and trading apps (Trade Republic, Trading 212, eToro, Freetrade, Robinhood, Scalable). Consumer-facing, heavily regulated, cyclical with markets.
• RegTech and financial crime (ComplyAdvantage, Quantexa, Featurespace, Elliptic, Chainalysis). The most reliable landing spot for anyone leaving a compliance or financial-crime seat, and typically a pay rise.
• Digital assets (Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, Anchorage, Fireblocks, Circle). Highest volatility in both headcount and compensation. Regulatory posture varies enormously by firm and jurisdiction — diligence this specifically.
• B2B finance software (Pleo, Spendesk, Qonto, Navan, BILL, Melio). Selling to finance teams rather than to banks. Closest to conventional SaaS in how it operates and pays.

What transfers from a bank, and what does not

Transfers extremely well: financial crime and regulatory expertise (fintechs are chronically short of it and pay up), treasury and liquidity management, credit risk modelling, payments operations and scheme knowledge, and anything to do with licensing. If you have run a regulator relationship, that is a scarce and valuable asset.

Transfers poorly: seniority itself. A bank VP is not a fintech VP. Titles compress on the way in and the scope-per-title is wider, which is a real adjustment. Also poorly transferred: process depth without product judgement. Fintechs hire people who can decide, not people who can escalate.

Understanding the compensation

Base salaries at a well-funded private fintech are usually competitive with a bank; bonuses are smaller or absent; the difference is equity. Read it carefully before you value it:

• Options vs RSUs. Options have a strike price you must pay and can end up worthless; RSUs at a private company vest but only convert to money on a liquidity event.
• Preference stack. Investors are typically paid before common shareholders in a sale. In a flat or down exit, that can mean employee equity returns nothing while the headline price sounds fine. Ask what the aggregate liquidation preference is.
• Exercise window. The standard 90-day post-departure window means leaving can force you to buy your options or lose them — with a tax bill and no market to sell into.
• The last round’s price is not a valuation. It is the price one investor paid for preferred stock with protections your shares do not have.

A reasonable heuristic: value the offer on base plus whatever cash is contractually guaranteed, and treat equity as a call option on the company’s success — real, potentially large, but not something to take a pay cut against unless you would take the job anyway.

Judging a company

Ask about revenue and gross margin, not users. Ask about runway in months and when the last round closed — a company that raised at the 2021 peak and has not raised since is in a different position from one that raised last year. Ask what the regulatory permissions actually are, in their own words, and check that the licence covers what the marketing implies. Ask the attrition rate on the team you are joining. And look at whether they are hiring across the board or only in revenue roles; the second pattern usually precedes a cut.

The move back

The move from fintech back to a bank is easier than it was and is now routine, especially into digital, payments and transformation roles — banks actively want people who have shipped. The move that remains hard is fintech back into a front-office markets or advisory seat, because those careers are cohort-based and rejoining mid-ladder is unusual. Plan the move knowing which door you are closing.

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