eFinancialCareers

Are you a compliance specialist who wants to boost your pay packet in one easy move? Now may be the time to jump to a hedge fund.

Kevin Dunleavy, head of global hedge fund strategy and client relations for Merrill Lynch, was recently reported in Financial News as saying the cost of a hedge-fund compliance officer has gone up 30 to 40 percent over the past two years alone. He’s not wide of the mark, say recruiters.

As a result, it seems no one wants to work in compliance for lower paying asset management companies. “Because their salary brackets cannot match what hedge funds can offer, we are seeing it can be quite hard to fill asset management vacancies,” says David Chen, a compliance specialist at recruitment firm PSD Group.

“Sometimes it can take six months while, for a hedge fund, we’ll have interviews lined up within a week,” he notes.

Hedge funds are particularly targeting compliance officers with strong product knowledge or whose experience is aligned to a particular product area, says Zoe Breadman, a consultant at recruitment firm IMS.

According to recruiter Robert Walters, a compliance director at the senior vice president is earning between $195,000 - $250,00 in annual salary, while a compliance manager at the vice president level is getting $125,000 to $165,000.