The typical investment banking career path in Australia, from intern to MD
Investment banking is known for being one of the most lucrative ‘professional services’ career pathways in Australia, with huge remuneration packages up for grabs for those who choose to fight their way up the competitive career ladder.
This career ladder tends to share a common structure across most firms, with each new role bringing new challenges, responsibilities, and of course, more money!
If investment banking is well known for its attractive salaries, it's even better known for its huge bonuses. In fact, if you, your division, and the firm are performing well, you can expect the bonus component of your remuneration to be significantly higher than your base salary, particularly as you climb up the career ladder.
Typical remuneration structure (base salary + bonus) for roles in the investment banking career path, from intern to MD
Obviously the more senior roles (and most lucrative pay packages), come with time. Which leads us to the third important factor when considering career progression - timeline! While time in each role varies enormously based on performance and other business and economic factors, a ‘typical’ career progression timeline (to the extent that this is a thing) might look something like this:
Let's jump into each of these career milestones and explore in more detail.
The investment career career path traditionally begins with an internship. Internship programs at most investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, J.P Morgan, and Macquarie, are targeted at penultimate-year students, and run for approximately 10 weeks over the Australian summer holidays (during university break).
These internships are the bank’s recruiting funnel for full-time graduate hires, so all going to plan, your internship will culminate in a job offer for an ‘Analyst’ role (up next). Hence the name - ‘Summer Analyst internship’!
Now it’s important to note, this full-time job offer is by no means a given. Offers are only extended to those interns who truly excel. Unlike internships at those cool startups where everyone seems chill and brings their pets to work, investment banking internships aren’t for the faint of heart. An internship with an investment bank is competitive, difficult, and may make you reconsider your career choice.
You can expect to think of this as a ‘taster’ for the ‘real’ work coming up next as an Analyst. Presentations, deal analysis, preparatory work before pitching for deals, working on deals, financial modeling, and being available for whatever junior bankers may need you to do. Rest assured you’re not going to be spending your summer making photocopies and fetching coffee.
The salary range for an internship depends on the firm. For example, an intern at J.P. Morgan can make approximately AU$60,000 per year (annual pro rata). You can view other similar internship opportunities (and salaries) open now right here.
Analysts are the ‘fresh graduates’ of the banking industry hierarchy - at the bottom rung of the career ladder.
Analysts are responsible for responding to the needs of clients, creating presentations (usually MS Powerpoint), providing data (usually in the form of MS Excel sheets), tracking buyers and sellers, providing market updates, and supporting the more senior bankers in whatever they need to do to close deals.
Investment banking, particularly M&A roles, are known for long hours and limited free time, with analysts typically arriving at 9am and often staying in the office until after midnight. Although working hours will obviously vary by role. If you’re on the trading desk, for example, you can expect your working hours to be more in sync with the trading hours of your market of focus. For another example, check out this day in the life of a Global Equities Sales Analyst at J.P. Morgan.
Analyst roles at investment banks consistently rank among the highest paying graduate jobs in Australia, with bulge bracket banks like J.P. Morgan offering base salaries from AU$140,000 up to and as high as AU$215,000, with additional bonuses typically in the order of 40-60% of base salary.
More broadly, Glassdoor reports the average base salary of an investment banking analyst in Australia to be AU$120,000 per year, with ranges from AU$103,000 up to as high as AU$282,000. Again, this doesn’t include bonuses, which can approach six figures or more. You can expect salary to vary slightly by location according to Prosple’s graduate salary report, with major global cities like Sydney attracting a 15% salary premium over most other locations that don’t benefit from a well-established banking scene.
You should expect to spend two to three years in an analyst position, typically with a pay increase of around 10-25% annually. If promotion to Associate doesn't occur during this timeframe, it's usually due to poor performance.
Analyst and other banking graduate job openings in Australia can be viewed here.
Associates are the next rung up in the investment banking career hierarchy. They are usually analysts that have been promoted internally, however they can sometimes be new hires, usually from an MBA program.
Associate responsibilities include overseeing analysts, communicating with senior members of the bank, coordinating with different parties in a deal, ensuring all documents are in order, and again, creating more PowerPoint presentations! In larger firms, associates act like project managers and are often being mentored by senior management for higher level roles such as vice president. Like analysts, associates typically work long hours. You can check out a typical day in the life of an associate here.
According to Glassdoor, salaries of investment banking associates at bulge bracket banks in Sydney typically come in around AU$250,000, and range from AU$190,000 to AU$350,000 per year. This doesn’t include bonuses, which can be an additional 50-100% of base salary. Associates typically stay in the role for 3-4 years, although this varies significantly based on performance and other factors.
By the time a banker is promoted to Vice President (or ‘VP’ for short), they’ve usually been in the industry at least 6 years, making this a senior position with, unsurprisingly, a growing list of responsibilities. VPs will, among other things, develop relationships with clients, handle deal requests, manage and assign tasks to associates and analysts (as well as checking their work), and make sure the objectives set by the directors and managing directors are achieved.
Like analysts and associates, VPs work long hours, but enjoy slightly more freedom (twelve hour days as opposed to fifteen hour days). As the VP is more of a client facing role, traveling offsite to meet clients is expected. You can get a feel for what to expect during an average day as a VP here.
VPs usually tend to be developed internally (having worked their way up the career ladder), as opposed to being recruited in as an outsider joining at VP level. As such, it’s less common to find these roles advertised publicly, which makes it hard to collate reliable salary data. Sources such as Glassdoor and Wall Street Oasis suggest investment banking VPs are usually paid a base salary of around AU$350,000 per year, with an additional bonus of 50%-150% on top of this.
A VP can expect to remain in the role for 3-4 years before being promoted. For those that leave (often due to the hours and the constant pressure), they’ll do so with an impressive CV and extensive network, and often slide seamlessly into an ‘in-house’ role in corporate strategy, corporate development, or corporate finance.
At this point in the investment banking path, it’s reasonable to assume your fellow VPs will also be competent, ambitious, and likely have their sights set on the next rung in the career ladder - a coveted SVP position.
The Senior vice president (SVP for short, also known as a director) is a combination of a salesperson as well as a manager. They are not only responsible for prospecting for new clients and sourcing new deals for the firm, but also managing the rest of the hierarchy. They serve as the face of the firm and are often the point of contact between the client and the team.
Work hours tend to be between fifty to sixty hours per week, with much of the time spent traveling to meet clients. Salary details are murky (like VP roles, they are rarely advertised publicly), but anecdotal reports place SVP salaries from AU$350,000 to AU$800,000 per annum, with additional bonus remuneration exceeding 100% of base salary.
SVPs can expect to remain in their role a minimum of 2-3 years before being considered for promotion (with the exact time frame depending on the amount of business they bring in). For a SVP to move up to the most senior final rung in the investment banking career ladder and become a Managing Director, they will need to have a track record of bringing in a constant flow of new business.
As outlined in the whos’ who in investment banks, the Managing directors (MDs) are at the top of the investment banking organizational hierarchy.
MDs are ultimately responsible for the firm’s revenue, or, more dramatically but (hopefully) less frequently, predicting when the music stops (as famously depicted by Jeremy Irons in ‘Margin Call’).
Managing directors are almost exclusively promoted from within the bank’s own internal ranks, having been carefully selected and mentored in preparation for this final and most coveted promotion. All of the years working within the bank have led up to this.
Managing directors spend fifty to sixty hours a week working, almost entirely in meetings (both in the office and on the road). They often meet with their VPs and SVPS, meet with clients, meet with funds to offer banking services, and with businesses seeking to go public. In other words, managing directors are full time relationship managers. If that sounds like a lot of meetings, you are correct. UBS for example, required its managing directors to have at least 300 meetings per year. You can see a day in the life of a managing director here.
Naturally, at this level the pay is eye watering. Wall Street Oasis and Wall Street Prep both place base salaries for MDs at between AU$400,000 and AU$1m+, with all-in compensation including bonuses well into the millions per year.
A career in investment banking is one of the most financially rewarding out there. Yet this reward is the result of working long hours, with countless meetings and considerable pressure. It isn’t for everyone, especially if you want a proper work life balance. It’s not unusual for bankers to decide after a few years that the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze.
Luckily, experience in investment banking sets you up with plenty of exciting ‘exit options’, ranging from careers with hedge funds through to private equity or consulting. Play your cards right and you will develop exceptional relationships with business and investor clients during your time in banking, and can use these relationships to easily jump across into an investment or corporate role in another industry.
Ready to kick off your career in investment banking and chase those big bucks? Check out hundreds of investment banking internship and graduate roles in Australia that are open right now.