{"id":291833,"date":"2025-12-26T15:05:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T23:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jthelander.com\/?p=291833"},"modified":"2025-12-26T15:05:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T23:05:00","slug":"salary-increases-for-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/?p=291833","title":{"rendered":"Investment Firm Salary Increases for 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Welcome back to the Thelander Compensation Digest. As we wrap up 2025, here is a sneak peek at the results from our Salary Increase & Bonus Survey with PitchBook. Noteworthy is the cost of living increase as a factor for salary increases, which ties directly to market conditions. Find out more below!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The percentage of investment professionals who received a salary increase for 2026 has gone down since last year, but is on par with for 2024. Let’s dig in deeper – out of the six levels of investment professionals – who exactly received a salary increase going into the new year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Key takeaways:\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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A similar amount of\u00a0Sr. Managing Directors \/ Sr. Partners<\/strong>\u00a0received a salary increase for 2026 compared to 2025 and 2024, which is around 5% higher than for 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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78% or more of\u00a0Associates<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Senior Associates<\/strong>\u00a0received a salary increase for 2026 – slightly down from “for 2025” but still higher than any other investment professional.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does AUM Make a Difference in Who Received a Salary Increase? <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Key takeaways: <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Partners saw minimal AUM driven variation in salary increases.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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However, non-partners were more likely to receive a salary increase at firms with less than $1 billion in total AUM – especially for\u00a0Senior Associates<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Associates<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Went Into the Salary Increase? <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Source:\u00a0Thelander-PitchBook\u00a0<\/a>Salary Increase & Bonus Survey<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cost of living gained in importance compared to all other salary increase factors – going from 54% to 68% (+14 percentage points).\u00a0

What Is The Salary Increase Percentage?<\/strong>

Here are the median salary increase percentages YoY as a percentage of base pay by level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Source:\u00a0Thelander-PitchBook\u00a0<\/a>Salary Increase & Bonus Survey<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The median salary increase percentage held steady for\u00a0Managing General Partners<\/strong>\u00a0at 3.5% and 4.3% for\u00a0Sr. Managing Directors and Sr. Partners.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Junior level talent saw a decrease at the median – going from 7.00% to 4.00% for\u00a0Senior Associates<\/strong>\u00a0and 5.00% to 4.50% for\u00a0Associates.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s The Bottom Line? <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As we look forward to 2026, larger firms are pulling ahead in hiring plans: 70% of firms with more than $1 billion in total AUM are planning to hire, compared to 62% of firms with less than $500 million in total AUM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s equally telling is the retention story. 2025 saw higher annual retention rates than 2024, driven primarily by decreases in involuntary attrition. In a market where junior talent had smaller raises, retention actually improved – suggesting firms are being strategic about who they want to incentivize to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you participated in the survey, you can download your complimentary participant report on the Thelander platform here<\/a>. You can also participate here<\/a> to secure the December 2025 report. All data is published in aggregate only with no individual names or firm names ever reported. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click Here to Participate in the Thelander – PitchBook Salary Increase & Bonus Survey Today<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thelander’s real-time data, insights and analysis are relied on by top-tier media outlets:\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome back to the Thelander Compensation Digest. As we wrap up 2025, here is a sneak peek at the results from our Salary Increase & Bonus Survey with PitchBook. Noteworthy is the cost of living increase as a factor for salary increases, which ties directly to market conditions. Find out more below!\u00a0 The percentage of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,3],"class_list":["post-291833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletter","tag-investment-firm","tag-newsletter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=291833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=291833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=291833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=291833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}