The highest paying jobs in banking are not for bankers
Bonus season is over for most of the world’s financial services professionals, and it’s time for a time honoured tradition: the eFinancialCareers 2025-2026 Compensation and Lifestyle Report, to benchmark how your bonus changed compared to your peers.
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While data from our report showed that the global average bonus was up 5%, there was a lot of nuance in the numbers. Salaries were broadly down. And bonuses were up strongly in some sectors – and down quite badly in others.
In our absolute terms, the highest bonus increases were to be found among hedge fund professionals and investment bankers, who saw their bonuses increase by around 22% to 20%, respectively.
Within investment banking, defined as M&A and both debt and equity capital markets (DCM and ECM, respectively), the biggest increases were for DCM professionals, whose bonuses increased by 20% on average. Equities capital markets professionals reported that their bonuses increased by 13.3%, and M&A bankers reported that their bonuses increased by 15.8%.
The only group of professionals who saw their bonuses decline were those in support functions (Finance, Risk, Operations, and Compliance – FROC). In this group, the biggest fall was for compliance professionals, whose average bonuses declined by 11.6%. Bonuses also fell significantly for operations professionals, where the decline was 5.3%. Interestingly, professionals from these two functions also reported substantial salary decreases, of 13.7% and 8.6%, respectively.
Quantitative finance professionals (quants) also achieved 32% increases in their bonuses. Interestingly, despite the impressive bonus increases, quants in our survey did not think they were particularly well-paid; just 32% of those in our survey thought so, compared to 37% of finance professionals, who received a net bonus decrease.
The biggest drop in compensation was for people that sold and traded commodities. Bonus for these professionals fell by 37%, and salaries also declined by 4.5%. Overall, compensation among commodities traders was down by 16.8%. Just 19% of commodities professionals responding to our survey thought they were paid fairly, compared to 33% and 37% of their colleagues in equities and macro trading, respectively.
Our 2025-2026 Compensation & Lifestyle Report can be downloaded here
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