Dubai and Singapore's bankers expect much higher bonuses than London and Paris'
We received more than 2,000 responses from financial services professionals in our Bonus Expectations survey. We asked them all a simple question - how much their they expected their bonuses to go up (or down) after 2025.
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Our respondents were based in the London, New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, and any other global financial services center you could imagine. But no matter where they were in the world, there was a general consensus: bonuses would be higher for 2025 than they were for 2024.
The most optimistic respondents, like in previous years, were based in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Most of our respondents in the region were in the UAE, but there were also significant numbers in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar, among others.
GCC-based respondents were likely to work for one of the local banks such as ADIB, First Abu Dhabi, or the Saudi Investment Bank (SAID). “I haven’t received any communication regarding my 2025 bonus yet,” an ADIB technologist said. Nonetheless, he still expected his bonus to increase by 70%.
The least optimistic bankers, much like last year, were in the UK & Ireland. British bankers expected their bonuses to increase by just 34% compared to last year. This is despite the lifting of the bonus cap, which should shift the weighting of total compensation away from salaries and towards bonuses in 2025.
“I have asked for a promotion,” said one risk associate at Citi in the UK. “But we have been told there will be no promotions, and possibly no pay rises.” His bonus was only around 10% of his total compensation, however.
Not all our UK respondents were pessimistic. One UBS operations VP who expected her bonus to increase by 50% said that the firm’s incentives “are far better than last year… Pay rises will not happen, but the bonus pool is better.” His bonus was less than 10% of his total compensation.
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