How much bankers earn at each firm

It’s a lot


A standard banking grad scheme salary starts at around £40,000, enough to buy you a fancy watch and a table at Forge on a Thursday.

But what happens once you’re in? From a lowly analyst to associate, up to the dizzy heights of Vice Presidents and beyond there’s the base salary and then the bonuses to bump it up.

First year analyst

They’re probably on more money than you

Junior bankers spend their days crunching numbers, and they get paid well for it with the base salary usually falling somewhere around the £40,000 a year mark in London.

This puts banking as one of the top contenders for the highest paid grad schemes in the country, but there’s a catch.

The exams are notoriously tough. If you’re not caught cheating on the exams then you’ve probably got a bright future in banking.

An analyst told The Tab: “We often work 12 hour days as a minimum. The pay is good but it gets even better.

“The exams are tough and can make it likely for people to cheat”.

The following figures come from recruitment site Glassdoor, which also publishes average salaries of its users.

  • Goldman – £51,000 + bonuses of over £20,000
  • RBS – £44,000 + bonuses of around £10,000
  • Lloyds – £42,000 + bonuses of around £3,800
  • HSBC – £40,000 + bonuses of around £18,000
  • Barclays – £38,000 + bonuses of around £8,000

Associate

This is where it gets serious

After around three years it’s time to step up. You’re like an analyst but a bit more important, managing the new recruits but reporting to the Vice President above.

This is where pay starts to shoot up dramatically. The following figures come from pay data company Emolument, who worked out the average pay for bankers across a range of companies, including bonuses.

Here’s what they said about Associates:

  • Citigroup: £127,000
  • Credit Suisse: £126,000
  • HSBC: £125,000
  • UBS: £123,000
  • Deutsche Bank: £119,000
  • Barclays Capital: £119,000
  • Royal Bank of Scotland: £93,000

Vice President

Like all good things, it takes time before you can become a VP.

Goldman recently made the bold move of promising entry level banker to Vice President in just five years if you’re good enough .

A trainee analyst at a rival firm told The Tab: “There’s a young co-worker on my team who got fast tracked out of a grad program. Now he earns more than most of the more experienced people I work with.

“Many of the older workers don’t necessarily have the ambition that some of the younger employees do. Some are at points in their lives where they don’t need that extra money.

“They just want to work their nine to five and take home their paychecks.”

But for those with the drive to climb higher, here the average pay stats for Vice Presidents.

  • JPMorgan: £359,000
  • Morgan Stanley: £260,000
  • Deutsche Bank: £252,000
  • Bank of America Merrill Lynch: £238,000
  • Barclays Investment Bank: £232,000
  • SocGen: £230,000
  • Credit Suisse: £225,000
  • UBS: £216,000
  • HSBC: £154,000
  • RBS: £136,000

Above the dizzy heights of VPs, the real high rollers of banks are directors and managing directors.

A director at Morgan Stanley or Deutsche Bank can expect to bring in close to £500,000 a year.

On the top level, the highest payer is the Japanese bank Nomura, who pay their managing director £1.2 million, with the Bank of America Merrill Lynch tailing just behind at £997,000.