2024-2025 Risk Management Compensation

It is definitely more difficult to make MD than in IB or trading for example, and the MDs are all managing some sort of group, but we are not talking head of risk or necessarily head of a department or anything. Maybe to clear the high end. Yes your random MD is risk is almost certainly making $600k+, probably not $1mm.

There is a lot of compression between these roles and FO roles for a couple reasons IMO:

• There is more demand due to increased focus on risk management and many "risk management" roles now sit within the business; to be clear this is where I am, I imagine independent risk management is on the lower end of these ranges.
• Because risk is more of a "normal" job than IB or S&T you will see market wages rise due to inflation in a way that does not happen as directly for IB or S&T. This is also true because a lot of IB and S&T roles have been overvalued for a long time and there is a continual realization in many places that the value of the seat can be separated from the value of the person filling it.

Now that's the bull case on risk, on the bear side:

• It is much more difficult to get promoted. My path to my "risk management" role (the quotes here are because it is more business and client facing than most of those roles but it is still classified as risk management) came through trading and (mostly) quant roles. The path to VP in the front office is basically automatic as long as you don't fuck up; now I see some people struggle even at that step. You also have to go through an SVP level to get to director. You are much much more likely to get stuck for life as an SVP making $275k.

For me it's mostly about the work/life balance. I am not the IB type at all but even if I was I would probably kill myself if I worked 80 hour weeks. I could realistically go back to quant or maybe even trading and likely make more money but even that would be a downgrade from a WLB standpoint (there are quant roles where the difference wouldn't be too bad, but then the pay bump wouldn't be that great either).