BSA 2024 Salary Guide Risk v2 SPREADS - Flipbook - Page 14
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Salary and bonus trends
Risk, quant and treasury starting salaries enjoyed
signi昀椀cant growth across 2021 and early 2022,
with employers often willing to stretch their budgets
to secure skilled candidates as the war for talent
intensi昀椀ed.
Predictably, this frenzied level of growth was
unsustainable and we have since seen salary
increases plateau as the market cools and
organisations become more cost-conscious.
Nevertheless, salary growth remains well above
historic averages.
“Firms stayed within their salary bandings more
rigidly in 2023 than they did over the previous
two years,” says Scott Nye, Executive Consultant
at Barclay Simpson.
“Employers are still willing to offer top-end
salaries for the right people, but there’s less
pressure to exceed their budgets to prevent talented
candidates from accepting a role elsewhere.”
As a result, fewer organisations believe that
candidates’ salary expectations are beyond
what they can offer. In fact, the percentage of
employers who say that current demands are
‘not at all’ aligned with their salary bandings has
almost halved from 41% to 21% over the past year.
On the whole, salary growth has been heavily
weighted towards more junior roles, with professionals who have 0-3 years’ experience enjoying
the biggest uplifts due to an ongoing scarcity of
talent at this level. As seniority rises, salary growth
typically declines and has been relatively 昀氀at
for those with 10+ years of experience.
With regards to wider remuneration, 81% of
candidates said they received a bonus in 2023,
a modest increase from 78% the previous year.
Our data shows the average bonus is currently
25% of a professional’s base salary, and all of
the organisations we surveyed said they intend
to offer bonuses over the next 12 months.
Meanwhile, the UK’s 昀椀nancial regulators formally
scrapped a cap on bankers’ bonuses on 31 October.
Prior to this, the cap was 100% of a professional’s
base salary, or 200% with shareholder approval.
Even very senior risk, quant and treasury
professionals are likely to receive bonuses in excess
of 100%, however. As a result, most candidates
weren’t affected by the cap when it was in place
and are thus unlikely to bene昀椀t from its removal.
Employers intend
to increase base
salaries for existing
employees by 5%
on average in 2024
