Other key findings of the group’s Product Management Salary Survey were that salaries were higher for those working on more complex products, while those in the retail banking area were paid less on average than those in insurance, wealth and investments, according to Parity director Victoria Butt.
Those salaries have plateaued since 2009, so while in the period from 2007 to 2009 people were asking for pay rises and getting them, “now it’s more like people being asked to take a slight pay cut”.
“It’s supply and demand; [between the global financial crisis and] conservative market conditions, a lot of product managers are being asked to do more work for the same money,” Ms Butt told InvestorDaily.
“Regardless of salaries being more in financial services, there is a lot more competition as well, so salaries aren’t being driven up.
“I’ve seen contractors within the [Future of Financial Advice] and MySuper space earning some good salaries because that is a time pressure dictated project,” she said.
More than 80 per cent of the 170 individuals who completed the survey were paid some sort of bonus as part of their remuneration package.
Ms Butt said risk product specialists tended to receive lower bonuses than other parts of the industry but this was offset by higher base salaries, while again, retail banking product specialists generally received lower bonuses than elsewhere in the industry.
Demand across the board was higher for junior and mid-level employees than senior product managers, according to Ms Butt.
“Roles are less prevalent at $180,000 plus at the moment than they were some years ago. The more senior you are the tougher it is because a lot of that middle management has been stripped out or people have taken a voluntary redundancy. There are some very strong senior people in the market still looking for work,” she said.
It is crucial for those people to be flexible in terms of the next opportunity they’re looking for and experience can almost be a disadvantage in that way because it makes it harder to step outside that area, she added.
Product analysts and associates had between two and four years’ experience on average and earned between $70,000 and $90,000, with retail banking slightly lower and investments slightly higher, with bonuses between 0 and 10 per cent across all sectors.
Product managers had around eight years average experience (slightly lower for retail banking) and earned between $110,000 and $130,000 with bonuses generally between 10 and 25 per cent.
The product specialist role has recently become more prevalent in investments and insurance with salaries between $130,000 and $150,000, the survey found. Ms Butt said some companies are beginning to use product specialists as a sort of hybrid role across product development, as well as sales and marketing.
“Some companies see product as a back-office function where they will just maintain a product, deal with highly escalated issues, and roll [product disclosure statements],” she said.
“Whereas the market isn’t allowing product to be like that anymore, which is where this [transition] into a product specialist seems to be coming from.”
Senior product manager salaries varied significantly between sectors, with base salaries in retail banking ranging from $110,000 to $150,000, in investments from $130,000 to $150,000, in insurance from $150,000 to $180,000 and in wealth management from $150,000 to $210,000.
Two in five senior managers had more than eight years’ experience, and bonuses across the four sectors ranged from 10 to 35 per cent of annual packages.
Head of product roles in investments and retail banking ranged from $180,000 to $210,000, while heads of product in wealth management and insurance exceeded $210,000. There was no consistency in bonus structure, which ranged from 0 to 100 per cent of salary packages.
