Goldman Sachs PWM Financial Analyst

Tasks: Analysts are jack of all trades on the portfolio side & PWAs (private wealth advisors) rely on them heavily. Tasks include: trading & rebalancing (options, structured notes, stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, currency, foreign stock, fixed income, flows in and out of managed accounts, etc), fielding client requests (only job in finance where you can pick up phone and public CEO / private company founder / PE/VC/HF founder is on the other end as a 22 year old), meeting prep (portfolio reviews / asset allocation & risk modeling / trust & estate planning), assist with pre-transaction planning / pitches (working out deal proceeds for a prospect and customizing an asset allocation, etc), general coordination between the client and specialty groups at the firm (client wants to speak with PM of strategy / research analyst / structure a solution around concentrated single stock, etc), various ad hoc tasks to “keep the lights on”

Progression:

Analyst for 3 years (increasing comp) at which point it is a time to make a decision (and make associate) Two paths: advisor (PWA) or financial investment professional (FIP). If PWA path is chosen, analyst enters a 2 year Business Development Professional (BDP) program which bridges the gap between analyst and advisor (transitions to driving revenue). After 2 years, BDP enters NPWA program (advisor that is not yet self-sustaining and has to eat what they kill to convert to a full self-sustaining PWA; ~3 year clock on a NPWA to bring in ~$80-100M AUM). If FIP is chosen, you transition to becoming a team COO... FIP is only really viable on larger teams (think $10M revenue) as they are comped out of the PWAs team pool. Associate FIPs are still salary / bonus until they hit VP (2-3 years) at which point they swap to commission. VP promote happens on advisor side once self sustaining conversion is made, FIPs can make VP a year or 2 faster, but comp upside to PWA is much higher.

Comp

Analysts are salary/bonus until they are either a PWA or VP FIP. Base is $85k and moves up at a slower rate than JP, but in the 5-10% range depending on performance. Bonus is 10-20% at each level of 3 year analyst program. BDP comp is murkier, but less than equivalent JPM comp. NPWA base is $125-150k and bonuses vary wildly on how fast you start to bring in clients. PWA comp average is ~$1.25M (still a VP)... MD’s (significantly fewer in this division and relative to JPM because you have to be a top 10% producer, you don’t just get the title) make $3M minimum (some well into $10M+}. FIP comp varies but starting out likely is better than BDP/NPWA... average FIP is probably a few hundred $k; have heard of some approaching $1M on mega teams.

Structure

Team has 3 roles:

Analyst, WMP (on desk operations / client service) advisor with varying levels of seniority and comp for each type. GS PWM is a hybrid private bank and wire house model (really operate most similar to JPM PB, but advisors get paid % of revenue). Unique relative to the other major players and just like GS broadly, there is a heavy emphasis on delivering the firm to clients and business principle #1 (clients come first). Culture and hours are more similar to GS IBD vs GMD (S&T).

Exit

This is the exit opp (brofessor covers well as nauseam). But have seen analysts leave for top 10 MBA (and then M/B/B / IBD / Corp dev), mobility to GSAM / IBD (hard, but doable) / divisional management / strategy (PWM analysts are in a high exposure seat because we run so lean, so you can make good impressions w/ top brass), other PWM opportunities / family offices (seen some very good placements as CFO/COOs here). Ultimately the analyst is a jack of all trades (not going to have same technical skills as banking) but has a very underrated skill set of professionalism / bearing that comes from interacting with a lot of the worlds most impressive people regularly. I’d say that the hardest part is getting your foot in the door to more traditional exit opps due to the stigma of PWM, but once it is in and they have a chance to demonstrate capabilities, it seems that people crush it

Apologies for brevity / typos... this app makes it impressively difficult to draft messages