Salary survey: Compliance pay moves higher

Salaries for most compliance positions in investment banks have risen in the past year, with increases for some jobs exceeding 10%, a survey shows.

More than 60% of respondents said pay had gone up, while 37% said it stayed the same and 2% recorded a decrease, according to the poll of 800 UK compliance staff and recruiters inside banks conducted by the recruitment firm PSD Group.

Salary increases ranged from an average of 2% for money laundering specialists with seven to nine years' experience, to reach 66,500, to a 16% rise for compliance assistants with four years' experience, to reach 38,500.

Marnie Woolf, business manager of PSD, said banks are currently looking in particular for junior staff: 'There has been a lack of young blood. Juniors with good experience are in strong demand.' She said product specialists, particularly in fixed income, were among those sought after.

Woolf said salary increases received by money-laundering staff had been relatively small to offset big rises the previous year, after banks recruited widely to meet growing regulatory needs.

The survey found wide discrepancies in compliance bonuses. On salaries of 50,000, payouts ranged from 5% to 50% of basic pay, while on salaries of 100,000, bonuses ranged from 10% to 100%, with the average bonus in both cases being near the lower end of the range..

Most bonuses rose last year, with increases sometimes as high as 40%. But some bonuses fell by up to 13% and some staff received no bonus at all.

Woolf said several heads of compliance reported that they had managed to negotiate higher bonuses for their staff, following paltry initial offerings by banks.

She said: 'Heads of compliance have been putting their foot down. In a few instances they felt that the bonus offered to the department didn't reflect the amount of work it carried out.'

(PSD can be contacted at marnie.woolf@psdgroup.com)