The Fintech compensation playbook: how Mollie navigates premium pay, regulatory limits, and faster scaling

Fintech compensation operates in a different reality: premium pay expectations, stricter regulatory limits, and faster company scaling that compresses years of comp challenges into months.

In this month's Reward Hour, Vaso shared exclusive Ravio data on exactly how fintech compensation differs from the wider tech sector.

She was joined by Marialena Savvopoulou (Total Rewards Lead at Mollie), who shared how she's built Mollie's compensation strategy from the ground up – navigating regulatory constraints and M&A integration in a fast-scaling fintech.

The discussion included:

• What Ravio's data reveals about Fintech pay: how benchmarks and salary increases compare to wider tech
• Why peer groups especially matter in Fintech: ensuring your salary benchmarks reflect sector reality
• Designing comp strategies within regulatory constraints: navigating bonus caps and strict compliance requirements
• Scaling comp through hypergrowth: Marialena's experience building globally and managing compensation post-M&A.

Key takeaways from the webinar

If you're more of a reader than a watcher, here's a few of the most interesting insights from Vaso and Marialena’s discussion on Reward in fintech.

Key takeaway 1: FinTech compensation is a constant balancing act

Fintech sits between two worlds: traditional banks (rigid, structured, slow to change) and tech companies (fast-moving, ever-evolving). This creates a unique balancing act for compensation professionals. You need to scale fast and attract the right people like a tech company, while navigating heavy regulation like a bank. Success requires close partnerships with legal, compliance, risk, and tax teams to design creative programmes within regulatory constraints.

Key takeaway 2: You can't make everyone happy, but you can explain the why

Whether you're communicating about different target percentiles for different job families or making tough comp decisions, transparency backed by confidence is key. You'll never please everyone with your compensation strategy, but as long as the management team can back up the message with clear rationale, your communication is good enough. Having a strong comp philosophy and being able to articulate the "why" behind your decisions builds trust, even when not everyone agrees with the outcome.

Key takeaway 3: Culture and gestures matter as much as compensation

Compensation is important, but it's not the only element in attracting the right people. Culture, flexibility, and recognition play a huge role in retention. Marialena shared that it's more about the gesture than the amount. A small spot bonus as a "handshake of well done", recognition in company reports, or showing empathy during life events builds goodwill that salary cannot. You can pay top dollar and still create a "golden cage" if the culture isn't right.

Key takeaway 4: Confidence level in your data is everything

When working with benchmarking data, not every data point has the same confidence level. Marialena emphasised the importance of identifying which results are stronger and using those with more confidence while leaving weaker data points aside. This is especially true when dealing with emerging roles or new markets. And critically, ensure your peer group is actually reflected in the benchmark you're using. For fintech specifically, filtering by industry matters because fintech comp can look quite different from general tech market rates.

Key takeaway 5: Get ahead of regulation with transparency now

With the EU Pay Transparency Directive approaching, transparency isn't optional anymore. Both Vaso and Marialena stressed that companies will need to share salary bands and compensation information whether they're ready or not. Start introducing transparency incrementally now: share salary bands, compa ratio, benchmarks, and your comp philosophy with employees. The sooner you build this muscle and get your house in order, the better positioned you'll be when regulation forces everyone's hand.