Regarding London, the 600+ GBP per day contracts are definitely not only for insiders. You probably didn't have the right experience in their eyes. Regarding finance specifically, the industry has its quirks so they like to get people who worked in finance before - otherwise, it can be a bit of a culture shock.
>> Regarding finance specifically, the industry has its quirks so they like to get people who worked in finance before
I had almost 8 years of experience as a software developer at the time and I did have some experience in the finance sector (but a small startup). My resume looks pretty great, one of my open source projects is quite popular (over 5K stars on GitHub) yet I did not even get asked to an interview.
I haven't worked in finance startups, but big finance is extremely heavy on processes, bureaucracy and security (accomplished via processes and bureaucracy). That's why they like people who worked in big finance before and didn't quit soon after joining (as some do) - it proves that you can deal with this frustrating environment.
