VP Sales in Financial Services: Salary, Tools, and Market Data from 615 Postings

Every week I tag executive sales job postings by industry vertical. Financial services, including fintech, banking, insurance, payments, lending, wealth management, and capital markets, is the third largest vertical in the dataset. Out of 1,349 total postings, 615 match financial services keywords. That's 47.4% by keyword matching, which tells you something about how broad this vertical really is.

I pulled the comp data, tool mentions, methodology references, seniority splits, and remote rates for those 615 roles. Here's the full breakdown.

Financial Services Is a Massive Hiring Vertical

615 roles. That's nearly half the dataset by keyword matching.

The number is high because "financial services" covers an enormous range of companies. A VP Sales at JPMorgan's treasury services division and a VP Sales at a Series A payments startup both get tagged. So does the head of sales at a regional insurance carrier, the CRO at a wealth management platform, and the SVP running lending partnerships at a neobank.

This breadth matters for how you read every number that follows. When I say the average base range is $163,425 to $234,874, that's averaging across a VP at MetLife and a VP at a 40-person fintech in Austin. The average is real. The variance behind it is massive.

The seniority breakdown gives you a sense of what these roles actually look like:

Seniority Level	Count	% of FinServ Roles
VP	512	83.3%
SVP	41	6.7%
C-Level	38	6.2%
Other	21	3.4%
EVP	3	0.5%

VP-level roles dominate at 512, which is consistent with the broader market. The 38 C-level roles include CROs, Chief Revenue Officers, and Chief Commercial Officers at financial services firms. The 3 EVP roles sit almost exclusively at large banks and insurance companies where that title still carries weight in the org chart.

Compensation: Below the Market Average, With a Wide Spread

Here are the numbers from 386 financial services postings with disclosed salary data:

Metric	Financial Services	Overall Market
Average Base (Low)	$163,425	$170,000
Average Base (High)	$234,874	$251,000
Median Base (Low)	$159,822	-
Median Base (High)	$215,000	-
P25-P75 Range	$120,000 - $275,000	-
Max in Dataset	$598,000	-

Financial services pays below the overall executive sales market. The average max base of $234,874 is $16,126 less than the $251,000 overall average. That gap isn't trivial over a few years of compounding.

Three factors drive the discount.

First, regulated industries have structured compensation bands. Large banks and insurance companies run comp through rigid HR frameworks with defined salary grades. Even when the role requires the same scope as a $280K VP Sales at a tech company, the bank's pay band might cap at $230K base. The delta often shows up in bonus structures, deferred comp, or equity-equivalent programs that don't appear in posted salary ranges.

Second, the insurance segment pulls the average down. Insurance distribution and carrier roles tend to post lower base salaries with heavier variable comp. A VP Sales at a property and casualty carrier might show a $140K base with a $280K OTE. The base looks low. The total package might not be.

Third, fintech startups offer equity in place of top-tier base. A Series A payments company might post $150K base with 0.5% equity. Whether that's better or worse than a $235K base at a public company depends entirely on the exit outcome.

The P25 to P75 spread of $120,000 to $275,000 tells the real story. That's a $155,000 range between the 25th and 75th percentile. If you're interviewing for a VP Sales role in financial services, comp could land almost anywhere in that window depending on company stage, sub-vertical, and geography.

The $598,000 max sits at the very top. That's likely a C-level or SVP role at a large financial institution or a late-stage fintech with aggressive comp to attract talent from big tech.

MEDDIC Is Barely Used in Financial Services

Of 615 financial services roles, 8 mention MEDDIC or MEDDPICC. That's 1.3%.

For a methodology that dominates enterprise SaaS sales conversations, the near-absence in financial services postings is striking. Here's the full methodology breakdown:

Methodology	Mentions	% of 615 Roles
Consultative Selling	95	15.4%
Enterprise Sales	47	7.6%
Channel / Partner	28	4.6%
Challenger	10	1.6%
MEDDIC / MEDDPICC	8	1.3%
ABM	5	0.8%
Value Selling	2	0.3%
PLG	1	0.2%

Consultative Selling at 95 mentions (15.4%) is the clear leader. That's nearly 12x the MEDDIC count.

The pattern makes sense when you think about who financial services companies sell to and how those buyers make decisions. Bank procurement teams, insurance underwriting committees, compliance officers, and treasury department heads don't move fast. They can't. Regulatory frameworks, internal audit requirements, and multi-stakeholder approval chains mean every deal involves layers of review that no qualification framework can accelerate.

Consultative Selling works in this environment because the methodology is built around understanding the buyer's problem deeply and building trust over time. A VP Sales calling on a bank's risk management team needs to understand Basel III implications, SOC 2 requirements, and how the bank's internal compliance review works. That knowledge builds credibility. Credibility builds trust. Trust closes deals.

MEDDIC is designed for a different environment. It's a deal qualification and pipeline inspection framework optimized for high-velocity enterprise software sales where the goal is to identify and disqualify bad deals early. Financial services deals don't typically fail because they weren't qualified properly. They fail because trust wasn't established, compliance concerns weren't addressed, or the procurement timeline exceeded the seller's patience.

Channel and Partner selling at 28 mentions (4.6%) reflects the distribution model that's common in insurance and payments. Insurance products move through broker networks. Payment solutions reach merchants through ISOs and payment facilitators. A VP Sales managing these channel relationships needs different skills than someone running a direct enterprise sales motion.

PLG at 1 mention. One. Product-led growth barely exists in financial services selling. The buyer personas, compliance requirements, and average deal sizes don't support a self-serve motion in most finserv segments.

The Tool Stack: Salesforce and Compliance

Salesforce appears in 111 of 615 financial services roles. That's 18.0%, and it's the highest CRM penetration rate of any vertical I've tracked.

Tool	Mentions	% of 615 Roles
Salesforce	111	18.0%
HubSpot	22	3.6%
Tableau	7	1.1%
ZoomInfo	4	0.7%

The Salesforce number isn't just about market share. Financial services companies choose Salesforce partly because of regulatory requirements. They need audit trails for every customer interaction. They need configurable security models that control who can see what data. They need compliance logging that tracks when records were accessed, modified, and by whom. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud was built specifically for these requirements.

HubSpot at 22 mentions (3.6%) shows up primarily in fintech startups and smaller financial services companies. Once a financial services company crosses mid-market, the compliance requirements typically push them toward Salesforce or a similarly enterprise-grade platform. HubSpot's lower share here isn't a quality judgment. It's a reflection of the regulatory environment these companies operate in.

Tableau at 7 mentions signals that some financial services sales orgs value BI and analytics as a distinct tool requirement. In industries where deal sizes are large and pipeline visibility is critical, having dedicated analytics beyond what the CRM provides makes the comp plan math, territory analysis, and pipeline forecasting more granular.

ZoomInfo at 4 mentions is low, which may reflect that many financial services companies have proprietary data sources and existing relationships that make third-party prospecting tools less critical than they are in tech sales.

Stage Mix: Enterprise Dominates, Fintech Is the Startup Story

The company stage distribution tells you who's actually hiring VP Sales talent in financial services:

Company Stage	Count	% of 615 Roles
Enterprise / Public	165	26.8%
Unknown	129	21.0%
Series A/B	49	8.0%
Series C/D	44	7.2%
Series B/C	29	4.7%
Late Stage	21	3.4%

Enterprise and public companies lead at 165 roles (26.8%). These are the large banks, insurance carriers, established payments processors, and public fintech companies. They hire VPs to run specific business units, geographic territories, or product lines within a larger sales organization.

The "Unknown" category at 129 is notable. Many financial services companies, especially private ones, don't disclose funding information. Regional banks, mutual insurance companies, credit unions, and private wealth management firms fall here. These are often stable, profitable businesses with real revenue, just not venture-backed ones that announce funding rounds.

Series A/B at 49 roles represents the fintech wave. These are early-stage companies in payments, lending, insurtech, and embedded finance that are building their first sales teams or hiring their first VP Sales. The comp profile here is different from enterprise. Lower base, more equity, higher risk, and the possibility of building something from scratch.

The gap between a VP Sales at a Series A payments startup and the same title at a top-four bank is dramatic. Different comp structure, different org size, different buyer relationships, different risk profile. They're both "VP Sales in financial services" in the data. They're very different jobs.

Series C/D at 44 and Series B/C at 29 represent fintech companies in their growth phase. These roles typically involve scaling from $10M to $50M+ ARR, building out regional teams, and adding enterprise accounts to a book that started with mid-market. The comp here tends to be the sweet spot: strong base, meaningful equity, and enough traction to derisk the join decision.

Remote at 48.3%: Below Average, With a Catch

297 of 615 financial services roles are remote. That's 48.3%, which sits slightly below the roughly 50% average across all verticals in the dataset.

The aggregate number hides a bifurcation that matters for anyone targeting this vertical.

Traditional financial services companies, the banks, insurance carriers, and asset managers, skew heavily toward on-site or hybrid. These organizations have physical offices, in-person compliance requirements, and institutional cultures built around showing up. A VP Sales at a regional bank in Charlotte is going to be in Charlotte. A head of insurance distribution in Hartford is going to be in Hartford.

Fintech companies are almost the opposite. Most Series A through Series D fintech startups are remote-first or remote-friendly. They were founded during or after the remote work shift, their engineering teams are distributed, and their sales teams cover territory from wherever they live. A VP Sales at a payments startup can be in Denver, Miami, or Portland. Geography is a function of where the talent wants to live, not where the office happens to be.

Location still matters for compensation and networking, even in remote roles. NYC and Charlotte heavy for banking. Hartford and Des Moines for insurance. San Francisco for fintech. Chicago for financial infrastructure. These cities have the buyer density, the talent pools, and the industry events that shape careers in financial services sales.

If you're currently in a traditional banking role and targeting fintech, the remote flexibility is a real benefit. If you're in fintech and considering a move to a large financial institution, be prepared for return-to-office requirements that may not be negotiable regardless of your seniority.

What This Means If You're Targeting Financial Services

The data points to several patterns that are specific to this vertical.

Regulatory Knowledge Is a Genuine Differentiator

Financial services buyers care about compliance. They care about it because they have to. SOC 2, PCI-DSS, state licensing for payments, FINRA regulations for securities, HIPAA-adjacent requirements for health insurance. A VP Sales who can speak fluently about these frameworks during the interview process signals that they won't need six months of ramp time learning the regulatory landscape. That cuts both ways: if you don't have financial services experience, expect questions about how you'll navigate compliance-driven procurement.

Consultative Selling Experience Matters Far More Than MEDDPICC Certification

95 roles mention Consultative Selling. 8 mention MEDDIC. If you're a VP Sales with a track record of long-cycle, relationship-driven enterprise selling, that experience translates directly. If your background is high-velocity SaaS with 30-day sales cycles and PLG-assisted pipeline, the adjustment to financial services selling will be significant. The deals are bigger but slower. The relationships are deeper but harder to build. The procurement process involves people whose job is specifically to slow things down and find reasons to say no.

Expect Structured Interview Processes at Large Firms

Banks and insurance companies hire through HR-driven processes with defined stages, assessment tools, and committee approvals. A VP Sales interview at a top-10 bank might include 8 to 12 conversations over 6 to 10 weeks. That's the norm, not the exception. Fintech startups move faster, sometimes making offers within 2 to 3 weeks, but the trade-off is less diligence on both sides.

Fintech Startup Roles Pay More But Carry More Risk

A Series A fintech offering $160K base with 0.4% equity and a Series C offering $210K base with 0.1% equity both appear in this data alongside a large bank offering $235K base with a 30% annual bonus. The math on each of these is completely different. The bank role is the most predictable. The Series A role is the most asymmetric. The Series C role sits in between. Your risk tolerance and financial situation should drive which segment you target, not just the base salary number.