Somewhere in most large financial institutions, there is a team leader who knows their best analyst wants to move into risk, or product, or another part of the business entirely. They know this because the analyst told them, probably six months ago. And they have done precisely nothing about it — not because they’re cruel, but because losing that person would make their own life measurably harder.
This is talent hoarding. And if you think it’s a minor operational nuisance, the data suggests otherwise.
Research from Ingrid Haegele at the University of Zurich found that 83% of top publicly listed companies identify talent hoarding as crucial friction in their organisation. Not “a concern.” Crucial friction. In a separate study, employees in one-third of firms reported feeling they needed to keep internal applications secret from their managers for fear of retaliation. Let that settle for a moment: people inside your organisation are treating an internal career move with the same secrecy as an external job search.
The mechanics of hoarding
Talent hoarding is rarely dramatic. It’s quiet. Managers steer their best people away from internal opportunities with well-meaning but self-serving advice: “It’s not the right time.” “You need another year in this role.” “I’d hate for you to make a move you’d regret.”
Eighty percent of learning and development professionals identify manager hoarding as the primary barrier to internal mobility. The managers aren’t villains — they’re responding rationally to incentives. In most organisations, a manager’s success is measured by team output, not by the talent they develop for the wider business. Growing a high performer for someone else’s team gets you nothing but a vacancy to fill.
We have built incentive systems that reward managers for keeping good people, and then we wonder why good people don’t move.
The cost nobody is counting
An external hire typically costs two to three times more than an internal move, once you account for recruitment fees, onboarding, and the productivity gap. In financial services, where specialist knowledge takes months to build and compliance training adds further delay, the premium is even steeper. And yet 79% of UK employers in financial services anticipate struggling to find skilled talent this year. The irony is considerable — we are spending enormous sums searching the external market while preventing our own people from moving into the roles where they’re most needed.
20% Goldman Sachs restructured its people function to partner with business unit heads on predictive talent roadmaps. The result: a 20% increase in internal mobility and faster deployment on digital initiatives. The talent was already there. The system just wasn’t designed to release it. — Goldman Sachs internal reporting, 2025
There’s a retention dimension too. People who can see a clear career path within their organisation are significantly more likely to stay. People who can’t — or who feel they have to apply in secret — are already halfway out the door, even if their resignation hasn’t arrived yet. In a sector competing for the same people as technology firms, that leakage is expensive.
What actually fixes it
This is not a problem you solve with a policy memo or a new internal job board, though both can help. It’s a problem you solve by redesigning the incentive architecture — the signals that tell managers what the organisation actually values.
First, measure and reward talent export. Some organisations have started implementing what they call a “talent dividend” — a budget bonus or recognition for departments that successfully place people elsewhere in the business. It sounds simple because it is. When growing talent for the organisation is as valued as retaining it for your team, behaviour shifts.
Second, make internal moves visible and legitimate. If people feel they need to apply secretly, the system is telling them that moving is disloyal. That message needs reversing — by processes that don’t require manager approval before an application, and by a culture where career ambition is normal, not threatening.
Third, give managers a reason to let go. Organisations that manage this well offer rapid backfill support, transition periods, and recognition that the team’s loss is the business’s gain. The goal is to make letting go feel safe, not heroic.
None of this requires a large budget. It requires a Chief People Officer willing to look honestly at the system — always harder when you’re inside it — and redesign the incentives with the leadership team.
The talent is already inside your organisation. The question is whether your system is designed to release it or contain it. In my experience, the answer is often the latter — not through malice, but through perfectly rational incentives producing an irrational outcome. Fixing that is one of the highest-return investments a people leader can make — and one of the more satisfying, because everyone wins.
Domi Alzapiedi is a Chief People Officer in banking, focused on the intersection of people strategy, organisational design, and commercial performance. She writes about the questions that keep leadership teams honest.