Crypto and Digital Assets: The Finance Talent Gap Behind the FCA’s New Regime

The FCA’s cryptoasset regime has moved from consultation to live obligation over a relatively short period, and firms bringing crypto and digital asset businesses inside UK regulation for the first time are discovering a problem that has nothing to do with their technology: there simply aren’t very many finance professionals who genuinely understand both cryptoasset accounting and FCA compliance at the same time. This post explains why that gap exists, what a real crypto finance hire looks like, and where firms are finding them.

Why This Talent Pool Is So Thin

Cryptoasset finance sits at the intersection of two specialisms that, until very recently, had almost no overlap. On one side, crypto-native finance professionals who came up inside exchanges, custodians and DeFi protocols understand digital asset accounting, wallet reconciliation and blockchain transaction tracing intimately — but many have never worked inside a formally regulated environment and have no direct experience of FCA reporting obligations, Consumer Duty, or the SMCR accountability framework. On the other side, experienced FCA-regulated finance professionals from traditional financial services understand the regulatory framework cold but have little or no hands-on exposure to how cryptoasset transactions actually need to be recorded, valued and controlled.

The candidates who sit genuinely in the middle — comfortable with both halves of the job — are rare, and firms competing for them are not just competing with each other but with the crypto sector’s historically generous compensation culture, which pushes up the cost of a strong hire considerably beyond what a comparable traditional financial services role would pay.

What the Role Actually Requires

Cryptoasset-specific accounting treatment

Valuing and accounting for cryptoasset holdings correctly — including the treatment differences between assets held for the firm’s own account, assets held on behalf of clients, and assets held as part of a trading or market-making book — is genuinely different from anything in a standard finance qualification’s syllabus. A candidate needs to have actually done this, not simply understood the theory in the abstract.

Safeguarding and custody arrangements

Where a firm holds client cryptoassets or client money connected to crypto activity, the safeguarding and segregation requirements echo CASS principles but apply them to an asset class with no established custodial infrastructure equivalent to traditional securities settlement — meaning the finance function often has to build genuinely novel controls rather than adopt an established template.

Financial crime and AML at scale

Cryptoasset businesses carry a materially higher financial crime risk profile than most traditional financial services firms, given the asset class’s historical association with money laundering typologies. The finance and compliance functions typically work far more closely together here than at a conventional regulated firm, and a finance hire who treats AML as someone else’s problem is a poor fit for this sector specifically.

A regulatory framework still taking shape

Unlike a mature regime like MiFID or the Consumer Credit sourcebook, the FCA’s cryptoasset rules have been evolving quickly, with new obligations phased in and existing ones refined as the regulator’s supervisory experience grows. A strong candidate needs to be comfortable operating in a framework that is still being actively shaped, rather than expecting the settled, well-precedented rulebook that characterises longer-established regulated sectors.

Where Firms Actually Find These Candidates

In practice, three profiles consistently produce strong crypto finance hires: traditional financial services finance professionals — often from payments, e-money or investment firms — who have taken a deliberate, recent interest in cryptoasset accounting and can demonstrate real study or hands-on exposure rather than a passing curiosity; finance professionals who have already worked inside a UK-authorised cryptoasset business, however briefly, and therefore understand both halves of the job from direct experience; and, less commonly, crypto-native professionals who have proactively built regulatory knowledge — often by working closely alongside a firm’s compliance function during its authorisation process — and can speak confidently about FCA obligations rather than only blockchain mechanics.

What This Means for Firms Recruiting Right Now

Firms hiring into this space need to budget for a genuinely premium search — both in fee terms and in the compensation the eventual hire will expect — and need to be realistic that “ticks every box” candidates are genuinely rare rather than simply hard to find through the wrong channels. The firms getting this right are usually prioritising demonstrated FCA regulatory fluency over deep crypto-native technical experience, on the basis that regulatory accountability is the harder gap to close after the hire, whereas cryptoasset-specific technical knowledge can be built more quickly by a finance professional who already understands the compliance framework properly.