Taking a moment out of our regular updates to let the many of you who have asked (and those that haven’t but want to nudge me) that yes, the 2025 risk compensation survey is kicking off soon! Read below for a bit of a preview, and for your chance to influence and support this year’s exercise.

This will be our fourth year conducting a salary survey. In 2022, we saw 80+ participants, providing data on 375+ individual risk staff and leadership positions. Last year, we saw 138 participants sharing data on 730 positions. That’s great growth, no matter how you slice it. This year, I hope we’ll continue the trend and surpass last year’s metrics.

In that spirit, here are some modifications and experiments I have in mind for 2025:

 

1. Participation: This survey works because firms and individuals participate. So please do!

I’m going to be more of a stickler this year on responsiveness. This is really just applicable to managers who oversee staff reports. If that’s you, please do include data on all of your reports.

This year there will be a question about team size. (So, if the size of your data set seems a bit small for your firm size, I may circle to check that we got complete data.)

(I’d love to do more about correlating team and firm sizes, but there are some many related factors in play it’s hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison… Still, maybe we’ll see some interesting trends? Or maybe we need a future survey?)

2. Data Collection / Presentation: I sincerely appreciate everyone who has written in with thoughts, ideas, and encouragement about the survey (and the blog in general)! Here are a few likely changes coming, based on some of those reader notes:

• We’re going to continue to include our Canadian readers, but will likely break out that data completely, as that market trends a bit differently from the US.
• (UK would be great, and I know we have a contingent of overseas readers, but I don’t think it’s quite large enough across all roles and segments to get us a complete picture. Maybe a few risk leaders out there want to help rally their peers after this round concludes?)
• Data and response levels permitting, we’ll do some percentile analysis, supplementing our standard average + standard deviation.
• We may include an optional input to flag “senior” roles in key categories like “conflicts analyst.” While the survey collects titles, it doesn’t break out data to this degree, or attempt to normalize after the fact.

3. “New York, New York”: Speaking of requests, Hello New York readers! You folks really, really do want to get data on just New York (city). >smile<

• There will be a new, optional field for “city/state” in the survey and if enough people do their part, we’ll have some fresh and new data for you.)
• We will still have and use the five general US regions (+Canada) as geographical regions to present data. Those of you who have taken the survey know that it lets managers/participants self-select on geography. (I leave it to you all to decide issues like where the Midwest starts and ends, because that and other hair-splitting geographical questions are too risky for me to wade into…)

4. Q&A section: Last year’s big new experiment was an optional Q&A section for risk leaders. Dozens of you participated in that and I hope you were were as fascinated by the responses as I was. That contingent submitted over 180 comments, generating 22 pages of reading.

Those questions came from me and several risk leaders who weighed in. I’m sharing them below, as I’m definitely open to input on what questions folks might want to see this round. So, if you have thoughts, let me know!

1. What are your top challenges tied to risk staff recruiting, training, and career development?
2. What are your goals for risk staff recruiting, training, and career development in 2025?
3. To what extent are you adding new/emerging roles to your risk organization (e.g. OCG, AI related)? If new roles aren’t yet defined or funded, which would you like to add if possible?
4. Are there staffing model changes you’re pursuing or would like to pursue moving forward?
5. What is your firm’s remote work strategy for risk? What challenges/opportunities, if any, does remote work present for your firm and its staffing strategy?
6. What risk initiatives, if any, is your firm focusing fresh investment in new staff, new resources for 2025?

 

Other survey questions, ideas, and feedback also welcome at this point. If you’re reading this in your inbox, just responding to that email should reach me. Otherwise, feel free to use the form on the blog website.

 

And if you took the survey last year, in addition to announcing the 2025 exercise here on the blog, I’ll be sending a direct email note when things kick off.

Thank you. And stay tuned!