Most financial services professionals (82%) in London expect to receive a bonus in the forthcoming 2009/10 round, despite the economic downturn, according to research by Morgan McKinley.
Furthermore, the survey showed that almost eight out of ten (79%) of these individuals expect to receive a similar (40%) or higher (39%) bonus amount than they did last year.
Of the 18% of respondents who stated that they do not expect to receive a bonus in the next round, 7% said it was because their employer was not paying bonuses this year. Other reasons included ineligibility for a bonus because they had not been with the employer long enough (7%), poor team performance (0.5%), and redundancy (1.5%).
The majority (76%) of the 200 financial services professionals surveyed were in the £35,000 to £80,000 basic salary bracket. Taking this into consideration, 60% of respondents said they expected a bonus amount of up to 25% of their base salary.
Almost a third (31%) said they expected a bonus of between 26% to 100% of their basic salary and 9% anticipate a bonus of 101% or more.
Andrew Evans, managing director of Morgan McKinley’s financial services division, said: “Given the improvement in market conditions over the course of 2009, it is not surprising that this survey suggests most of London’s financial services professionals expect to receive at least a similar or higher bonus amount than last year.
“However, this must be seen in the context that last years’ bonus payouts were at suppressed levels compared to the previous two years. By no means do these bonus expectations imply a return to the boom times and it will be interesting to see how these expectations compare to actual payouts in the New Year.”