Pay for financial services operations people is better than you think
Operations professionals, the tireless plumbers of the financial services industry, are not famous for their pay – but maybe they should be.
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We trawled through data from recruitment consultant Michael Page – the Ideal Recruiter for financial services professionals – and found that operations professionals are doing surprisingly well, all things considered. It all depends on where they are based.
India is probably the most likely place to find offshored operations professionals. The country has a huge, educated, English speaking workforce, and cost-of-living differences makes it cheap to hire them. Banks have huge Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India, employing tens of thousands of locals, in places like Mumbai, Pune, and Hyderabad.
Operations professionals working for multi-national firms (both domestic and foreign) can earn very good money in India. Figures below are from Michael Page’s India Salary Guide 2026; at the top level, a managing director can earn up to 150 lakh rupees, or the equivalent of £116k, $157k, or €135k.
Pay at lower ranks is of course lower, but purchasing power differences still make these strong salaries. There is little variation between working for national and multinational employers.
Operations professionals haven’t been in demand in the United States for some time, and especially not in high cost-of-living areas such as New York and San Francisco. Instead, if they are in the US, they tend to work for smaller local banks or in sunbelt metros such as Tampa or Tucson.
Nonetheless, those that remain in the US tend to be well paid. Again, according to Michael Page, salaries can go up to $313k, with total compensation reaching $450k depending on seniority and specialisation. It’s not on par with what bankers or traders earn of course, but it’s still pretty good.
Another place that has lost operations professionals recently is Poland. Over the years, international firms have invested billions in the Polish workforce due to the cheap availability of well-educated professionals, much like India. This has raised the Polish economy in turn, however, and the average Polish worker now enjoys a similar purchasing power to his peer in the UK.
Still, operations roles do exist in Poland. They tend to be well paid, better than India, but of course not on par with the USA. A typical graduate’s starting salary in operations at a Polish GCC is approximately $28k.
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