Hong Kong is constantly ranked among the world’s most expensive cities and banking jobs there generally still pay well.
If you want to be well rewarded in Hong Kong in the years after you graduate, it makes sense to go into a career in the finance sector.
Or does it? Front-office investment banking and to a lesser extent wealth management remain highly compensated, while compliance and even some risk and accounting roles also pay well.
However, if you’re a graduate looking for a career that will help you stay solvent over the long-term in costly Hong Kong, some parts of banking sector are best avoided.
We’ve looked through 2017 pay surveys from four finance recruiters in Hong Kong and identified the (non-technology) roles that pay the worst average salaries to people with about five years’ experience (i.e. those who are at, or around, associate level in investment banks).
If you’re rotating across different departments on an analyst programme, don’t get stuck in one of the jobs in the table below (which averages out salary numbers from the four surveys) when your training ends.
People in all 10 of these functions – including even sought-after roles like credit risk, internal audit, and onboarding – are still earning HK$500k (US$64k) or less five years after they graduate.
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