An advisory and recruitment firm in the world of wealth management has issued surveys on how much family office and other wealth firm professionals earn.

The highest-ranking chiefs of private banks and wealth management houses earn potentially higher fixed salaries than those among single and multi-family offices; with other roles seeing a mix of remuneration levels. However, there are always exceptions to the rule, where some single family offices pay extortionately above the level of remuneration for similar firms or even wealth managers and banks, according to a new global survey that seeks to illuminate what can be an opaque industry.

One of the paradoxes of wealth management is that at the very highest end of the wealth scale where family offices reside, data is often hardest to find, contrasting with the mass retail market for entities such as mutual funds.

Agreus, a family office and wealth management advisory and recruitment firm, has produced a report examining remuneration in the family office and private wealth management sectors. It says the family office compensation study is probably the first such benchmark of its type. In the report, titled Agreus Family Office Compensation Benchmark 2015 which is based on 200 responses from people working in single and multi-family offices, it looks at the spread of compensation for different occupations in the space. The Agreus Private Wealth Management Compensation Benchmark 2015 is based on interviews with around 100 industry job candidates and established professionals. Data has been taken from institutions based within the UK.

In the family office report, Agreus said that for the role of chief executive/managing director, fixed salaries range from £100,000 ($154,232) to £250,000, while investment analysts earned from £40,000 to £60,000. For private banks/wealth managers, managing director salaries range from £150,000 to £300,000, and for analysts, the spread is £30,000 to £40,000. (For more detailed findings, see here and here.)

Obtaining clear and comparable data on family offices remains challenging. “Unlike traditional wealth management institutions, salaries in a family office vary due to a range of different factors,” Agreus said. “These may include the total assets managed within the firm, the complexity of the wealth (and therefore of the workload) and the experience required to be successful in a role. Even so, as well as having no standard salary, family offices also have no standard particular roles that can be clearly defined either,” Agreus continued.

Agreus questioned more than 200 clients and candidates ranging from some of the largest single family offices where a 10-person team manages over $10 billion of assets under management to the smaller single family offices running less than $1 billion. The report includes information gathered from some of the leading names in the industry.