Why tech transformation staff in finance are severely underpaid

Many firms in financial services such as Deutsche Bank and Citi are undergoing massive technology infrastructure revamps. The transformation staff overseeing it all are in high demand, but the pay doesn't always match their responsibilities.

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How much do transformation staff in finance earn?

A salary report from McGregor Boyall this week broke down London average salary ranges for a variety of transformation and cloud roles in financial services. Some of these can be seen below.

According to the report, multiple transformation roles such as delivery managers, change managers and product owners all earn salaries below £100k on average. Even top paying roles like directors of transformation seem poorly compensated compared to the amounts front office staff are earning in finance.

Tech staff have also been complaining about poor bonuses at banks this year. The 'luckiest' banking technologists only reported bonuses of around 2-3% of salary.

Interestingly, one of the most lucrative jobs in transformation is an agile coach, but this is a role many say is frequently misused by the industry. Scot Baldry, who just became global CTO of JPMorgan, recently lamented that agile had been peddled as a "miracle cure" by agile coaches with no technical background nor understanding of why agile matters. He's still a fan of the methodology though, as is JPMorgan, which has adopted agile practices for 90% of its tech teams. 

How intense are transformation jobs in banking?

Very. Especially when banks don't give you the resources to do your job.

An insider for one major bank undergoing a big technology transformation spoke to us recently to say that banks aren't giving these staff the resources necessary to do their (enormous) jobs. At his bank, "any honest evaluation of the status quo would require very painful budget allocations that could reduce bonuses." Instead, the bank has a "relentless focus on cost control, and will continue to squeeze until something breaks, or an outside force compels them to act differently."

In many cases, he says legacy applications need to be rebuilt from scratch because the institutional knowledge loss of constant re-organizations and outsourcing efforts is so great. Only a select few apps can be transitioned to the cloud, but "migration can be even more complex than decommissioning or rebuilding applications." The insider says his bank is "incapable of making the decisions necessary to avoid a technological train wreck."

The insider, who has since left his bank, says the transformation was severely behind schedule at the time he departed. As support for critical applications run out over the next few years, the pressure put on transformation staff to deliver will be immense, far above their current pay-grade.

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