Risk managers reckon on bonuses

Not unlike most other people working in investment banks, it seems risk professionals still expect to receive a bonus this year.

A survey of risk management professionals in investment banks by risk recruiters GRS Group suggests 67% of them still expect to get something in the way of a bonus. And 43% of them expect that bonus to be greater than or equal to whatever they received last year.

This compares favourably to our own recent bonus survey, which found that across the market as a whole, 32% of people expect to be paid more than or the same as last year, and that 68% of people expect to receive at least something at bonus time.

David Butters, head of GRS Risk London, takes risk professionals' comparative optimism as a sign that "risk is in the ascendancy".

It's not that ascendant, though. Butters reckons (somewhat infeasibly) that in a very good year a star credit risk officer might even be able to earn 850k. "I don't see this happening in the market right now," he confesses.