Burnout in Finance: The Hidden Culture Behind an Always-On Industry
Content warning: this post discusses workplace bullying, sexual harassment, burnout, and substance use. If any of this feels overwhelming, please take care while reading.
About the author
Verinder Sharma is a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner and the founder of Soul Somatic Therapy, working online with clients across the UK and internationally, in English and Spanish. Before training as a therapist, Verinder worked in financial regulation at the Financial Conduct Authority and IOSCO, across supervision, market abuse, policy, and ESG, bringing direct, lived experience of the pressures covered in this article.
Verinder is a Director of SEAUK (the Somatic Experiencing® Association UK), and holds accreditations with CThA and IACTM.
Burnout in Finance: The Hidden Culture Behind an Always-On Industry
If your work is running your life, eventually it can take over and run you, giving you the symptoms of burnout, stress, overwhelm, and anxiety. If you work in the financial sector, this may feel especially familiar, and rarely something colleagues speak about.
The Experience
You may recognise some of this:
Anxiety to perform, to achieve the workstream milestones, and the next appraisal goals
Long hours that still don't feel like enough, slowly taking a toll on your health
The hypervigilance of regulatory/compliance roles, you're always scanning for risk, running through scenarios of what could go wrong, and never able to switch that off. You take it home with you, and it takes over your thoughts from everyday, regular life experiences
Anxiety that you've missed something on the report, the system entry, and the dread of what will happen
Your responsibilities carry high-stakes, high-consequence decision-making, and there's the heavy fear of catastrophic error
Ethical dissonance - enforcing or working within systems that may sit uneasily with your personal values, bringing related emotional distress and physical tension you can't easily push away
Reputational exposure and public accountability keep you worried, thinking about what the future could unfold.
The Culture
There's a work culture that you find doesn't work for you, despite switching teams, and companies, finding it a welcome change at first, but then seeing the same issues everywhere.
Superficial friendships breed distrust and office politics
Unhealthy competition between colleagues undermines friendship, collaboration, and team dynamics
If you are kind and compassionate, you can be undermined at work and seen as weak
Office politics and backchannelling are rife, going against stated company values yet widely accepted, with little standing up against it, and few acknowledging the bullying it enables, or displaying the values of being a good human
Fear of disclosing a mental health issue, despite management and HR insisting there's no stigma, you know you'll face a negative narrative
Fear of whistleblowing on ethical issues, despite the protections in place, because it threatens success measures and certain people's careers
Information overload that's irrelevant to your work and life
Drugs, excessive alcohol, and addiction are part of the industry's culture, even those who hold professional responsibility to the highest standard aren't immune to this. A compassionate therapeutic approach looks for the root causes of the addiction and helps resolve it, rather than just managing the symptom.
Bullying, in particular, is rife and widely tolerated, taking forms such as:
Triangling, forming a power group around a shared narrative, sticking to the same agreed story even when it's false
Isolation of the person targeted
Exclusion from social gatherings, informal chats, and the work that would show their potential
Intimidation, protected by workplace hierarchy and power dynamics
Passive aggression, used as another route to isolate and exclude
Fear of challenging seniors, particularly around behaviour or ethical issues relating to the work
A regulatory shift that changes the stakes
From 1 September 2026, new FCA rules extend existing conduct requirements on bullying, harassment, and violence to around 37,000 more regulated firms, bringing this kind of behaviour formally into the same framework as financial misconduct, and into how firms assess whether someone is fit to work in the industry. This follows a 2024 Treasury Committee report on sexism in the City, in which lawmakers said they were shocked by the prevalence of sexual harassment and bullying, and by how poorly such allegations were often handled. Much of what's described above, particularly under Culture, is no longer simply “the way things are,” it's now explicitly a governance and conduct matter.
For some, this brings a sense of validation: what you've experienced or witnessed is being recognised at an industry level. For others, it adds a new layer of anxiety, reports already suggest some firms are reviewing staff conduct more closely ahead of the deadline, which can make an already high-pressure environment feel even more exposed.
Wherever you sit with this, it's worth remembering: the pressure you're carrying isn't only personal. It's structural, and it's finally being named.
A short personal note
I worked at the Financial Conduct Authority in Canary Wharf, London, and later at IOSCO in Madrid, so I've experienced the pressure of the financial industry directly, working under scrutiny, unsure of my own performance, and questioning whether I was knowledgeable enough. I also saw how office politics could become a way colleagues bonded with each other, often at someone else's expense.
That period changed the direction of my career. I later trained as a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, and now work with people still inside this industry, and people who've since left it. Read more about my approach on my About page.
What somatic therapy can offer
Talking things through can help you understand what's happening. But if your body's still bracing for the next risk, the next error, the next difficult conversation, understanding alone won't switch that off. Somatic Experiencing® works directly with the nervous system, helping it come out of constant alert, rather than just managing the symptoms on top of it. (For more on what this actually involves, see the FAQ below.)
If you recognise yourself in any of this and want to keep building your career in finance while properly looking after your mental health, that's exactly where this work can help.
For a closer look at what sessions actually involve, and how this compares to EAP or coaching, see Blog 2 - Why EAP and Coaching Aren't Enough for Finance Sector Burnout.
Frequently asked questions
What causes burnout in the finance industry?
A mix of sustained high-stakes pressure, long hours, hypervigilance in risk-facing roles, and a workplace culture that often normalises overwork, office politics, and difficulty raising concerns.
Is burnout in finance different from burnout in other industries?
The pressures overlap with many industries, but finance carries some distinct features, regulatory scrutiny, high-consequence decision-making, and a culture where showing vulnerability can be seen as a career risk.
Can therapy help if I want to stay working in finance?
Yes. Many clients aren't looking to leave the industry, they want support that helps them manage the pressure sustainably while continuing to build their career.
What is Somatic Experiencing® and how is it different from talking therapy?
It's a body-based approach to processing stress and trauma, working with the nervous system directly rather than relying on discussion alone, helpful when the body stays “on alert” even after the stressful situation has passed.