The widening compensation gap between portable and non-portable senior private bankers.

By Steve Slater, Managing Partner | Ateca Market Intelligence

The senior private banking compensation market has shifted over the past two years in ways that are consistent across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. The most important change is the widening spread between the compensation required to attract a senior banker with a demonstrably portable client book, and the compensation required to attract the same banker without one. This note sets out what we are seeing and what it means for hiring institutions.

The underlying shift

The market has always placed a premium on bankers with portable books. What has changed is the size of that premium. Two years ago, the portable-book premium was meaningful but calibrated — typically expressed through guaranteed bonuses in the first one or two years, and occasionally through a higher base. Today, the premium is materially larger, expressed through longer guarantee periods, higher base salaries, and in some cases substantial sign-on awards tied to asset transition milestones.

The drivers are structural. Private banks across the main booking centres are competing for a limited pool of senior bankers with genuinely portable, compliant, and growing books. The organic growth rate of the industry, combined with the retention strategies of existing employers, means that fewer senior bankers are genuinely in market in any given year than the demand would suggest. The banks that win in that environment pay.

What “portable” actually means

Portability is the key variable and it is more specific than it sounds. A portable book is not simply a book of named clients. It is a book that is likely to transition with the banker, within a reasonable window, under the regulatory and contractual constraints of the candidate’s current and future employers. The variables that affect portability include: the regulatory regime under which the clients were onboarded, the non-solicitation provisions in the banker’s current contract, the strength of the underlying banker-client relationship relative to the institutional relationship, the client segment’s openness to moving, and the competitive positioning of the hiring institution in the eyes of those clients.

Our clients who assess portability most accurately in the scoping phase are the ones who structure the compensation, the timeline, and the transition most effectively. Our clients who assume portability without assessing it are the ones who find themselves renegotiating the economics of the hire 18 months in.

What non-portable senior bankers are worth

A senior banker without a portable book is still a valuable hire — for team leadership, for institutional knowledge, for coverage of client segments the hiring bank does not currently serve, for specialist investment expertise, or for the coaching of younger bankers. But the compensation calculus is different. These hires should not be priced at the same level as portable-book hires, and the banks that do so overpay. Conversely, some banks now systematically underprice non-portable senior bankers, which is a missed opportunity — some of the best hires our clients make are senior bankers brought in for leadership rather than asset transition.

Geographic variation

The portable-book premium varies by market. It is widest in Singapore and Hong Kong, where the client-book dynamic most directly maps to assets under management and revenue. It is narrower but still significant in London, where the regulatory environment and the cultural character of the market moderate the dynamic. It is most idiosyncratic in the Middle East, where the relationships are personal, the family office sector behaves differently from the private banking sector, and the compensation structures are less standardised.

Implications for hiring institutions

  • Do the portability assessment properly at the scoping stage — it is the single most important variable in the economics of the hire
  • Do not pay portable-book compensation for non-portable senior bankers, and do not underpay non-portable senior bankers who bring other forms of value
  • Build guarantee structures that reflect the realistic asset transition timeline, not the candidate’s optimistic estimate of it
  • Be prepared to pay the market for genuinely portable, compliant, and growing books — or be prepared not to compete for them

A note on our approach

Ateca advises clients on compensation structuring as part of the mandate scoping phase. We work from direct market data rather than published benchmarking, because in senior private banking the published benchmarks meaningfully understate the true cost of competitive hires. Our compensation input is part of the mandate, not a separately charged advisory service.

To discuss a specific mandate or the compensation considerations for a planned hire, please contact us.