Why Banking, Finance, and Insurance HR Teams Are on Red Alert in 2025

Get Tim Sackett’s Thoughts on Misconduct, Return to Work, and the Push for Modern Social Media Screening

Tragic events. Rising threats. A hard push to return to office. HR and TA teams in Financial Services are feeling the pressure—and misconduct risk is only growing. Here’s what leaders need to know, according to Tim Sackett.

🎥 Watch Now: Tim Sackett on the State of HR and TA in Financial Services

HR and TA leader Tim Sackett breaks down what’s keeping Financial Services HR teams awake at night—from the spike in misconduct and workplace threats to the heated debate over return-to-office (RTO) policies.

Whether you’re leading talent acquisition or responsible for protecting your workforce, this conversation offers practical insight into the key risks facing the banking, finance, and insurance sectors in 2025—and what you can do about them.

The Landscape in 2025: Why HR Teams Are Working Overtime

It’s no longer just about hiring great talent—it’s about keeping your people safe. After several high-profile tragedies in 2024, including the murder of United Healthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson, Financial Services employers are asking hard questions:

How are we protecting our executives and employees?
What screening strategies are in place beyond the hiring stage?
Are we missing early warning signs of risk—before they escalate?

At the same time, many financial leaders are pushing hard for a return to the office, citing concerns over declining performance, lack of creativity, and slower decision-making in remote environments.

As Tim shared in the video, the message from top executives is clear:

“We’re less creative, we’re slower in making decisions, and we’re just not as successful as we could be when we’re not together face-to-face.”

But returning to the office also brings new challenges—for starters, workplace safety. This increases the importance of addressing misconduct risks head-on.

Misconduct Is Rising—and It’s Contagious

The 2024 State of Misconduct at Work report revealed a some troubling patterns:

Over 1 in 10 Financial Services candidates show warning signs of misconduct in their online presence.
These candidates average 28 misconduct signals each.
Threats is now the #2 most common form of misconduct in the industry.

What’s even more concerning: misconduct isn’t isolated. It spreads. Research shows that misconduct has a social multiplier of 1.59—meaning exposure to misconduct behaviors leads to nearly 2 more acts of misconduct.

Additional research shows how this happens in practice. First, someone is exposed to misconduct. After enough exposure, they may start to normalize it, advocate for it, and then participate in it themselves.

In a high-stress environment like banking and insurance, that’s a serious problem.

Why Relying Only on Pre-Hire Screening Isn’t Enough

As Tim says in the video, traditional background checks happen once—at the point of hire. But what happens after that?

From a people perspective, life events, stress, layoffs, or job insecurity can lead to behavioral changes that put your people at risk. But, generally from a business perspective, there’s very little if any ongoing screening. Without ongoing screening, employers have no meaningful and data-driven visibility into whether an employee’s online behavior has shifted into risky territory.

The tragic reality is that many violent incidents or insider threats are committed by current or former employees—not outsiders.

“We tend to check backgrounds when somebody is hired. But we don’t rescreen as employees—and something might happen in their life that triggers a behavior we’d want to know about.”

RTO, Misconduct, and Performance: Why These Issues Are Connected

The return-to-office conversation is about more than where people work—it’s about how well they perform and how safe the environment is. In the video, Tim shares insights from a senior executive at one of the top 10 global financial institutions, who noted that:

About 10% of employees may perform better fully remote
40% perform worse at home than in the office
The remaining 50% thrive with flexibility and autonomy

But where does safety fit into this picture?

Misconduct risk—especially threats, harassment, and intolerance—can escalate when stress levels rise. Whether it’s resentment over RTO policies, frustration with leadership, or financial insecurity, the factors that fuel poor performance often overlap with those that drive misconduct.

3 Critical Actions for HR and TA Leaders in Financial Services

#1. Rethink Screening Beyond Day One

Overall, traditional hiring processes and background screenings generally miss about 5% of misconduct and key warning signs. But, in Financial Services, that number is over double: at 11%. This is why it’s critical that banks, insurance, and other financial institutions think beyond traditional hiring and background screening processes to include online and social media screening in your pre-hire process.

Beyond that, many Financial Services firms are beginning to rescreen employees beyond the hiring process to surface early warning signs of misconduct like threats, violence, and even insider threats. Conducting ongoing rescreening post-hire helps catch new risks as they emerge – before they become a problem.

#2. Prioritize Performance—Not Just Location

While leaders in Financial Services are finding it difficult to operate remotely, it’s important to understand that the most effective return to office strategy is an individualized approach. It’s easy to adopt an all or nothing opinion on remote vs. office work. However, it’s also important to recognize and focus on letting people work where and how people perform best in a way that also considers the safety and wellbeing of your workforce. In truth, just because someone wants to work remotely, doesn’t mean they are effective at doing so. At the same time, it’s important to prioritize the general wellbeing and performance at work.

#3. High Performance and Low Risk Go Hand in Hand

When we think about performance, we often think about productivity, engagement, and work contributions. However, what’s often neglected is the fact that “high performers” can often be the ones creating harmful and toxic workplace cultures that impact the productivity and performance of everyone else. Effective misconduct mitigation requires us to recognize that high performance and low risk go hand-in-hand. That means creating cultures of accountability that make it clear that misconduct will not be tolerated—whether online or in person. It also means empowering managers to recognize and escalate concerns early is an important managerial task that should be incorporated into management training. Further, that includes providing employees with clear channels to report non financial misconduct like threats and harassment.

Don’t Let Misconduct Escalate Into Crisis

Whether it’s threats, harassment, fraud, or violence—the cost of ignoring misconduct is too high. Fama’s social media screening solution provides employers with the data they need to surface early warning signs from publicly available online content—before risky behaviors escalate into real-world consequences. Recent screenings flagged a CFO candidate with a history of fraud and sexual misconduct, and uncovered a hit list and manifesto that prevented a workplace shooting.

The tools to prevent misconduct exist. But they only work if you use them.

For more information on Fama’s research, check out the: 2024 State of Misconduct at Work To learn how Fama’s solutions detect misconduct at work, request a demo today.