Career Switch Decision (Corp. Strategy to PE)

I work in a fortune 500 international insurer's corporate strategy team as a senior manager (i.e. around USD US$100K base). Currently internally there's an opportunity in the PE team (i.e. Limited Partner function) for an investment analyst role. I've always wanted to try PE, but a career switch will cut my base by 10-20%.

Is it common to switch into PE with a pay cut? What would justify a move?

2 Comments
 

I'm not surprised to see a paycut... you're moving down in title + the LP side in general doesn't pay super well (at least relative to the GP side, people at FoFs are certainly still doing okay), and at an actual corporation like yours, you're effectively part of the Treasury function. Corporate Strategy can at least be more directly related to revenue generation.

In terms of what would justify a move, what are your career goals? Hard to say without that info. Offhand, I will add that 1) you would be going from being a couple notches up on the totem pole (Senior Manager) back to an entry-level role (Analyst) and 2) you will likely have less visibility internally with a role like this v. Strategy where I assume you interact with functional / BU heads consistently. The tradeoff is this role should be a bit more external facing and you will get to meet and understand different funds and their strategies. 

 

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