CFA Salary Around World | Hedge Funds News (2024)

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A significant number of CFA charterholders are also compensated with bonuses and incentive pay that may not be captured in their reported salary.

Many financial professionals seek the Chartered Financial Analyst designation to improve their marketability and salary prospects. In this article, we're going to delve into the numbers behind CFA salary data to discover how much difference a CFA charter can make in salary.

It's not an easy task, because the CFA Institute does not make such information available and because, unlike, say, a law degree, the CFA is broadly applicable to the financial services industry and doesn't have a clear career progression.

This makes it hard to measure any salary increase attributable to the CFA charter.

A significant number of CFA charterholders are also compensated with bonuses and incentive pay that may not be captured in their reported salary.

According to the CFA compensation reported cited above, 90% of 2007 respondents were eligible for cash bonuses and 80% were eligible for non-cash compensation like restricted shares or share options.

There comes a time in a Wall Streeter's life when he or she must make a decision about how to advance their career.

For many that means deciding whether to head to Business School for a Masters in Business Administration, or to take the Chartered Financial Analyst exams — the CFA.

A CFA certification is more niche. CFA charterholders are investment professionals, and the skills they pick up are super analytical.

They tend to stay on Wall Street and head to a hedge fund, private equity firm, or bulge bracket bank.

Chartered Financial Analyst Salary

It's important to know what, on average, holders of these certifications/degrees make. To get that info, Business Insider contacted compensation research firm PayScale for the numbers. Here's the break down (YE means years of experience):

As you can see, people that are only CFA charterholders tend to make $27,000 more than people that only have a MBA, and $13,000 more than people that only have a MBA in Finance.

Ultimately, whether or not you get your MBA or take the CFA depends on what you want to do. If you want to network and take a broad set of skills to the business world, consider taking the expensive leap into Business School.

However, if you know that you want to be an analyst, go for the CFA. You can take those skills to say, Disney's corporate development department, but for the most part this test is for Wall Street lifers. And they'll get compensated handsomely for it.

In the end, both the MBA and CFA are valuable.

The CFA, however, is widely coveted by professional investors who work at money managers and registered investment advisors, the types of firms that many financial advisors get their first jobs and initial training and background.

CFA Salaries by Industry

The kind of employer for whom a chartered financial analyst works impacts how much that person earns. For example, self-employed chartered financial analysts make the most: some $170,900 on average. Those on contract also do well, pulling in $142,400 on average per year.

CFAs working for foundations or trusts make an average of just around $100,000 annually, those in private practice with a firm earn around $85,000, and those working for federal, state or local governmental entities earn between $81,400 and $87,000 a year.

Hospital-based CFAs earn around $92,600 and college or university CFA employees make around $75,000, according to the PayScale.com survey.

CFA Salaries by Size

The company's size helps to determine how much the company pays its CFAs — generally speaking, larger companies pay slightly better than smaller companies, although the differences are not extreme. For example, small companies with fewer than 10 employees pay the second-lowest median incomes, about $84,500 per year, while in this survey, companies with between 200 and 599 employees paid CFOs the lowest incomes: around $81,500 on average.

Meanwhile, companies with between 10 and 49 workers paid CFAs approximately $88,100, and companies with 50 to 199 workers paid their CFAs around $90,300.

The most lucrative employers for CFAs to work for were those with between 20,000 and 49,999 workers: those companies paid CFAs around $102,200. Meanwhile, larger companies paid slightly less, about $97,900.

CFA Salaries by Job Type

The CFA salary will vary based on the type of job, years of work experience, employer, and other factors. Using information gathered from various sources, the range of CFA salaries based upon job type ranges from $61,210 for a corporate financial analyst to $145,810 for a chief financial officer.

Other positions include investment/securities analyst ($73,090), financial analyst ($62,460), senior financial analyst ($79,245) and vice president of finance ($131,700).

Payscale.com provides additional data ranges on base CFA salaries broken down by title. Portfolio managers are paid $59,492 – $162,747. Financial analysts are paid $40,801 – $95,414.

Investment analysts are paid $44,347 – $117,280. Senior financial analysts are paid $51,680 – $ 103,824. CFOs are paid $74,922 – $239,545.

CFA Salaries by Years of Experience

Based on years of work experience, the median CFA salary is $51,050 for less than 1 year of experience, $63,900 for 1-4 years of experience, and $93,452 for 5-9 years of experience. More senior CFA charter holders with 10-19 years of experience had a median CFA salary of $119,309.

CFA charter holders with 20 years or more of experience had a median CFA salary of $147,260.

CFA Salaries by Employer Type

The CFA charter holders work for a variety of employers and earn a range of salaries. CFA charter holders who worked as contractors had one of the lowest median CFA salaries at $50,400. CFA charter holders who were employed by trusts or foundations earned median CFA salaries of $77,438 per year, while hospitals paid salaries of $78,001 per year.

Private practices, companies, and colleges paid median CFA salaries of $80,617, $84,792, and $86,400 respectively.

Self employed had median CFA salaries of $90,005, while those employed by non-profit organizations had median Salaries of $90,690, and people employed by schools had median salaries of $98,264.

Franchises and other organizations had among the top median pay for CFA charter holders at over $100,000.

Government workers are also rewarded by having a CFA charter with state and local governments paying $76,041 and federal governments paying CFA salaries of $78,467.

CFA Salaries by Company Size

According to Payscale.com, CFA salaries varied depending on company size. Companies with under 10 employees had median salaries of $75,756 for charter holders. CFA charter holders at companies with 10 to 49 employees, 50 to 199 employees, and 200 to 599 employees had CFA salaries of $83,144, $85,649, $97,579, respectively.

CFA charter holders at companies with 600 to 1,999 employees, 2,000 to 4,999 employees, 5,000 to 19,999 employees earned CFA salaries of $100,980, $82,571, $90,807 respectively.

CFA charter holders who worked at companies employing 20,000 to 499,999 earned median CFA salaries $101,940.

CFA Salaries by Company Sales

The CFA charter holders working for companies with less than $500,000 in sales earned the lowest median CFA salaries at $70,468. Those working for companies with sales between $500,000 and $2,000,000 earned CFA salaries of $82,122. The salary for CFA charter holders working for companies with sales between $10 million to $99 million earned salaries of $130,180.

For companies with sales between $100 million to $500 million, charter holders earned CFA salaries of $132,500.

Companies with annual sales of $2 billion or more paid its CFA charter holders salaries of approximately $104,000.

CFA Total Compensation

it is important to note that the quoted CFA salaries constitute base pay only and do not include bonus or profit sharing components. According to the CFA Institute, the average total compensation received by CFA charter holders located in the US was $304,000 as of 2001. Becoming a Chartered Financial Analyst is perhaps one of the most important career decisions that you can make as the CFA Charter has a global presence.

It is also a solid resume enhancer and will provide stable long term employment, substantial CFA salaries, and excellent benefits.

CFA Average Salary

The website PayScale.com, which bases its estimates on responses from more than 2,600 CFAs across the U.S., reports that CFAs earn between around $45,000 to upwards of $180,000 per year. Unsurprisingly, those with less experience have lower reported salaries: those with less than one year of experience earn around $58,600, while those with one to four years of experience earn about $68,000, on average.

Meanwhile, CFAs with 10 to 19 years of experience earn around $127,000, and CFAs with 20 or more years of experience earn about $156,000 per year.

The most highly paid CFAs work as chief financial officers (CFOs) and earn about $152,000 per year.

Portfolio managers earn about $109,000; senior financial analysts earn around $81,500; financial analysts earn about $65,500; and securities or investment analysts earn around $70,000.

Research analysts earn about $75,800.

CFA Salary Around World

It is interesting to note that the salary range becomes much steeper in certain jurisdictions around the world. E.g. an entry level CFA charterholder in India makes Rs 468,000 roughly equivalent to $7,500 a year (at the time of writing), whereas Indian CFA charterholders with more than 20 years experience make a massive salary jump to a median of Rs 4,200,000 roughly equivalent to $67,750.

Median bonus payments are heavily skewed as well at about 10% for entry level positions rising to above 30% for senior positions.

In the UK the payscale is much less steep with an entry salary of £35K (app. $54K) increasing to £73.5K (app.$113.6K) for 20 years and beyond. Median bonus payments in the UK appear slightly higher than in the US at roughly 15% for entry level positions rising to app. 25% at the senior levels.

Lastly if you are from a small country or in a niche job role chances are that you will not find much data on Payscale.com that relates directly to your circ*mstances.

The best you can do is to try and find similar roles in similar jurisdictions to try and get a rough idea.

Average Salary of a CFA in USA

The median salary for CFA charterholders in the United States based on years of experience can be seen in the table below.

See CFA Average Salary in USA:

CFA Salary UK

The median salary for CFA charterholders in the United Kingdom based on years of experience can be seen in the table below.

See CFA Average Salary in United Kingdom:

CFA Salary in Germany

The median salary for CFA charterholders in the Germany based on years of experience can be seen in the table below.

See CFA Average Salary in Germany:

CFA Salary in Switzerland

The median salary for CFA charterholders in the Switzerland based on years of experience can be seen in the table below.

See CFA Average Salary in Switzerland:

CFA Salary in Singapore

The median salary for CFA charterholders in the Singapore based on years of experience can be seen in the table below.

See CFA Average Salary in Singapore:

CFA Salary Hong Kong

The median salary for CFA charterholders in the Hong Kong based on years of experience can be seen in the table below.

See CFA Average Salary in Hong Kong:

CFA Salary in India

The median salary for CFA charterholders in the India based on years of experience can be seen in the table below.

See CFA Average Salary in India:

CFA Salary in Brazil

The median salary for CFA charterholders in the Brazil based on years of experience can be seen in the table below.

See CFA Average Salary in Brazil:

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