How much am I worth?Origination director, structured finance, London

A panel of specialist headhunters give their assessment of typical London pay packages: Origination director, structured finance, London: salary - 100,000-150,000, bonus 300%-700% of salary.

For professionals who love innovation and a challenge, the beauty of the phrase &quotstructured finance" is that, like many other technical phrases, it can mean pretty much whatever you want it to mean.

Richard Gander of Wellington Consulting maintains it encompasses everything from project finance to asset-backed securitisation, while other specialists suggest it defines all types of lending that are not pure &quotvanilla" lending.

The other appeal of structured finance is that unlike most other areas in the City of London, it has been undergoing something of a boom over the past 18 months, with almost every type of finance house involved in it to some degree.

The trend however has increasingly been towards securitisation, which after a major dip last year in the high-yield, leveraged finance market has become the most buoyant area of structured finance.

The appeal is obvious: securitisation is a safer haven offering secured lending, there is more choice in the type of transaction and it appeals to those who are relatively risk averse. Better returns are possible because one can choose which type of asset one wants to invest in.

The other appeal is that a diverse range of businesses are increasingly turning to City professionals for securitisation: recent big clients have included a diamond mine, a leading French champagne house and a wool factory.

&quotStrategic hiring continues to take place in growth areas of securitisation, such as whole business securitisation," says Rebecca Lea of Alexander Mann Global Markets (AMGM). She says several City securitisation teams have aligned themselves more closely with credit derivatives.

Lea believes that while the synthetic CDO (collateralised debt obligations) market has gone off the boil there is still a strong appetite for individuals with CDO experience eager to get involved with a current growth area - alternative asset securitisation.

One reason for the general buoyancy of the market is clear: structured finance is a complex, technical field and the supply of good, reliable professionals who understand how the market works - and can optimise returns - is far outweighed by demand from institutions who want a greater share of the market.

Another reason is that the job market is changing, with senior directors increasingly specialising in origination and junior personnel focusing on execution, although within smaller teams this trend is less clear.

&quotThere are fewer candidates on the market: supply is falling as the people that were let go by banks in the last six months get soaked up," says Wellington's Richard Gander, pointing out that the market was anyway considerably less affected than others in the City by the recent downturn.

Given the diversity of the structured finance market - indeed of even the securitisation side - attempting to gauge salary levels is an imprecise science, to say the least.

The benchmark has to be the investment banks, where base salaries are at least 100,000, with bonuses anything between 300%-700%., some headhunters say. Others tend to be more conservative in their assessment of bonuses at the upper end, unless an individual's area of expertise is in a perceived growth area.

At the moment these include those whose CVs include a specific German, Spanish or Italian focus.

Figures and commentary provided by Alexander Mann Global Markets and Wellington Consulting