{"id":291858,"date":"2025-12-29T15:35:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T23:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jthelander.com\/?p=291858"},"modified":"2025-12-29T15:35:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T23:35:00","slug":"salary-increases-for-2026-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/?p=291858","title":{"rendered":"Investment Firm Compensation: 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<\/a>. 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: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

Does AUM Make a Difference in Who Received a Salary Increase? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Key takeaways: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Partners saw minimal AUM driven variation in salary increases. <\/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 Senior Associates<\/strong> and Associates<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Went Into the Salary Increase? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Source: Thelander-PitchBook <\/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). 

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: Thelander-PitchBook <\/a>Salary Increase & Bonus Survey<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The median salary increase percentage held steady for Managing General Partners<\/strong> at 3.5% and 4.3% for Sr. Managing Directors and Sr. Partners. <\/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 Senior Associates<\/strong> and 5.00% to 4.50% for Associates.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s The Bottom Line? <\/strong><\/p>\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: <\/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":[6,3],"class_list":["post-291858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletter","tag-cvc","tag-newsletter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291858","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=291858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=291858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=291858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brightturn.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=291858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}