Family Offices: This is how much their top staff get paid

Not only that, but total compensation levels at US family offices should look enticing to those in other parts of the financial/business world. That will attract more talent.

The annual average base salary of a chief executive of a single-family office in the US is $556,100, according to a compensation survey by McNally Capital, Botoff Consulting, and Mack International. Average total compensation, which includes bonuses, is double that at $1,130,500. Average total compensation of the top 10% earners in the survey is $1,520,000.

For those CEOs working at $1 billion-plus family offices, the compensation levels were considerably higher. The average base salary is $919,400, and the average total compensation is $2,370,100 for these bigger family offices.

For those CIOs working at $1 billion-plus family offices pay packages were bigger”

Compensation levels tended to go down the smaller the family office in terms of assets under management, and the survey looked at the average compensation levels at family offices with less than $100 million of assets. Here, CEOs were paid an average base salary of $432,600 and a total compensation of $491,800.

Interestingly, those compensation levels were higher than the next tier up family offices, those with assets of between $100 million and $299 million. But the tiers up from these smaller family offices all reported higher total compensation levels as assets under management grew.

For chief investment officers, the annual average base salary for all single-family offices is $401,600, and average total compensation is $810,800. The top 10% of earners got paid an average base salary of $750,000 and an average total compensation of $1,336,000.

For those CIOs working at $1 billion-plus family offices pay packages were bigger, with the average base salary coming in at $606,1000 and average total compensation at $1,499,600. Bonuses play a bigger part in the compensation of CIOs than for CEOs at family officers, or at least for those at the top level (top 10% earners) with total compensation at $4,015,000 for these CIOs, compared with their base salary of $1,160,000.

For chief compliance/risk officer positions at family offices, the average base salary is $223,400 and average total compensation was $339,100.

Senior portfolio managers have an average base salary of $281,900, but can earn much more through bonuses, with the average total compensation pay at $651,400. The top 10% of earners in the job category can earn more than $1 million annually.

Portfolio managers earn an average annual base salary of $184,700 and a total compensation of $414,300. And a senior analyst is paid an annual average basic salary of $152,100 and a total compensation of $238,500.

For the top executives at family offices, these numbers are in line with a survey done last year by Institutional Investor on family office compensation levels that found the annual average total compensation of 187 senior executives at single-family offices was just over $2 million.

The McNally Capital, Botoff Consulting, and Mack International study surveyed 152 family offices for its findings.