Regulatory jobs in financial services and investment banks can be divided into various categories, including:

Sales and trading compliance - working with a bank's salespeople and traders to ensure their activities comply with the requirements of the local regulator. Sales and trading compliance pros are often product specialists - for example, they might specialise in bonds, equities or derivatives.

Control room compliance - these workers perform tasks such as maintaining the bank's restricted list (which confines confidential information to key individuals), ensuring Chinese Walls are upheld and checking for abnormal or alarming dealing activity. The control room compliance team ensure staff placed on 'stop and watch' lists are stopped - and watched.

Monitoring and surveillance - scrutinise trading transactions and specific behaviour that might indicate fraudulent activity, such as insider dealing or manipulation of markets across the exchanges.

Anti-money laundering (AML) - stop money laundering (where the financial proceeds of illegal activities are given the appearance of being legitimate).

Asset managers,hedge funds, retail banks and insurance companies all recruit compliance staff. Regulation of financial services firms has increased and compliance has become increasingly important in the wake of the global financial crisis. As well as containing jobs for compliance officers, managers and senior professionals from compliance recruitment agencies, this section also includes jobs at financial services regulatory bodies such as the FSA (in the UK) and the SEC (in the US). Regulatory jobs frequently revolve around the enforcement of such regulations.

To ensure the documentation and contracts associated with their business fall within the law banks and financial services firms employ an army of lawyers or attorneys and paralegals in conjunction with compliance staff. This section also includes these legal jobs within financial services.