For family offices, compensation can be a particularly sensitive subject. These are organizations built around highly personal relationships, confidentiality and trust, yet they are increasingly employing sophisticated professionals whose skills are in demand across financial services, investment management and professional services.
That begs an important question: are family offices paying people fairly, and do they know how they compare with the market?
The answer is not always straightforward.
Unlike larger corporations, family offices are often highly bespoke. Roles can combine responsibilities that would sit across several departments in a conventional organization, while compensation may include a complex mix of salary, bonuses, co-investment opportunities and long-term incentives. That makes benchmarking more difficult, but also more important.
The 2025 Global Family Office Compensation Benchmark Report draws on responses from 585 family office professionals, supported by 20 interviews with senior leaders globally. The research highlights a fundamental challenge; because family offices are so individualized, reliable compensation benchmarks have historically been difficult to access. That lack of visibility can create risk.
Without robust benchmarking, organizations may unintentionally pay two people with similar responsibilities differently, allow salaries to drift away from the market or rely too heavily on historical compensation decisions.
There is also a wider issue around gender. Morgan Stanley’s Single Family Office Compensation Report found that women held just 29% of leadership positions across the family offices surveyed. Within investment-focused family offices, the figure was even lower at 24%.
These figures do not, by themselves, demonstrate a gender pay gap. A pay gap can be influenced by factors including seniority, role type, experience and representation at different levels. But they do highlight why family offices should look beyond individual salaries and examine the structures that determine who progresses into the highest-paid positions.
And the global picture further reinforces the importance of continuing to examine these issues. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report found that 68.8% of the global gender gap had been closed, but estimated that full parity remains more than a century away at the current rate of progress.
When looking at benchmarking, however, it’s important to remember that pay equity does not mean every employee should receive identical compensation.
A portfolio manager and an executive assistant have different responsibilities, skills and market values. Even two people with the same job title may have different levels of experience or scope.
The goal is to understand why differences exist and ensure they are based on legitimate, transparent factors, and that begins with a clear reward philosophy.
Family offices should understand the market value of their roles, establish appropriate salary ranges and consider how bonuses and long-term incentives fit into total compensation. The same Morgan Stanley research found that 90% of single-family offices offered annual incentive or bonus plans, while 62% of investment-focused family offices used long-term incentive plans.
This makes the structure of reward just as important as base salary.
Highly capable professionals have choices. If employees believe their contribution is not being fairly recognized, retention can become more difficult (particularly in a sector where specialist skills and institutional knowledge are extremely valuable).
Transparent and well-benchmarked compensation can therefore support more than pay equity. It can strengthen recruitment, retention, engagement and trust.
For family offices, this is an opportunity to professionalize reward without losing the personalized nature that makes them distinctive. A thoughtful compensation review does not need to result in a rigid corporate pay structure. Instead, it can provide leaders with the information they need to make better, more consistent decisions.
The question is not simply whether a family office has a pay gap, but whether its leaders understand their reward data well enough to know why people are paid what they are paid, and whether those decisions support the organization they want to build.
