LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks for Financial Services (2026)

Key Takeaways

In financial services, the average LinkedIn connection acceptance rate is 26.0%. Replies to the connection note average 2.2%, and replies to a message after the connection is accepted average 10.3%. Those numbers come from 732,855 connection requests sent by 767 financial services accounts between May 2025 and April 2026. All three sit below the cross-industry averages of 28.5%, 3.0% and 10.4%.

Financial Services vs. the platform average

Metric	Financial Services	All industries	Difference	Rank
Connection acceptance	26.0%	28.5%	-2.5 pts	34th of 38
Connection-note reply	2.2%	3.0%	-0.8 pts	32nd of 38
Message reply after acceptance	10.3%	10.4%	-0.1 pts	24th of 38

Across the 38 industries with at least 50 sending accounts, acceptance runs from 21.8% (telecommunications) to 36.5% (staffing & recruiting). Note replies run from 1.8% to 6.6%, and message replies from 7.2% to 18.9%.

What the numbers say about financial services outreach

Financial services is hard to get into and reasonably normal once you are in. Acceptance of 26.0% ranks 34th of 38 and sits 2.5 points below the cross-industry average. Note replies of 2.2% rank 32nd. But message replies of 10.3% land within a tenth of a point of the 10.4% platform average, ranking 24th.

That combination is unusual. Most industries that struggle at the door also struggle in the conversation. Here the filter is almost entirely at the connection request, and an accepted connection behaves like an accepted connection anywhere else. Whatever suppresses acceptance stops mattering once the person has said yes.

With 767 accounts and 732,855 requests this is the fifth largest sample in the set, so the low acceptance is well evidenced rather than a small-sample artifact. End to end it works out at about 2.7 replies per 100 recipients, below the cross-industry 3.0 but ahead of software.

If your numbers sit below these

The dataset says where an account sits, not why. From what we see in campaigns, three gaps come up most often in this sector, and they point at different problems.

Acceptance under 26.0%. The sector line is already 34th of 38, so a number below it is genuinely low. This is the measure to work on first in financial services, because it is the only one where the sector carries a real handicap.

Note replies under 2.2%. Notes do less in this sector than almost anywhere. Before rewriting, it is worth testing requests without a note at all and comparing acceptance, since the note is competing for the same attention that decides acceptance.

Message replies under 10.3%. This is the measure where financial services is ordinary, so a shortfall here has no sector explanation behind it. An accepted connection in this sector responds at the same rate as one anywhere else.

Further reading:

• Improving your LinkedIn Sales Navigator targeting
• Personalising the message request without tripping limits
• The LinkedIn message follow-up formula

Frequently asked questions

What is a good LinkedIn acceptance rate in financial services?

26.0% is the sector average, 2.5 points below the 28.5% cross-industry figure and 34th of 38 reported industries. Anything above 28% is doing better than the sector and matching the platform.

Why is connection acceptance so low in financial services?

The dataset establishes that it is low, at 26.0% across 767 accounts and 732,855 requests, without establishing a cause. What it does show is that the effect is confined to acceptance: message replies after acceptance are 10.3%, within a tenth of a point of the platform average.

Is LinkedIn outreach worth doing in financial services?

On these numbers it converts at about 2.7 replies per 100 recipients end to end, against roughly 3.0 across all industries and 2.4 in software. The sector is below average but not an outlier, and its weakness is concentrated at the connection request rather than the conversation.

How this data was collected

Financial Services is reported from 767 accounts and 732,855 connection requests sent between May 2025 and April 2026, drawn from the LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks 2026 dataset of 13.2 million requests across 13,302 accounts. That report carries the full methodology, along with the breakdowns by sender seniority, company size and month that are not repeated here.

Two things to hold in mind while reading any of these figures. The industry is the sender’s, taken from their company profile, not the recipient’s. And only industries with at least 50 sending accounts are reported at all: below that, a single unusual account moves the average by several points, which is why some of the most extreme numbers in the full appendix are not published here.

Related industry benchmarks

• Computer & Network Security, 26.0% acceptance and 10.7% message replies
• Health, Wellness & Fitness, 25.1% acceptance and 9.9% message replies
• Outsourcing / Offshoring, 26.1% acceptance and 9.2% message replies
• All industry benchmarks

Grade your own outreach against these numbers

Enter your own acceptance and reply rates and grade your outreach against the financial services benchmark, plus see where you sit among all 38 reported industries. No signup.

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Data updated 19 August 2026. Refreshed quarterly against the source report.