Sobchak,
Thanks for the detail. I think you could definitely leverage your actuarial background and get into some quantitative roles when combined with the charter, but the ranges would vary greatly. Depending on what else you have in your background, if you are smart and present yourself well, I would think that you could command in the low- to mid-100’s upon obtaining your charter (I’m going to dispense with the EL and mid-level stuff; we’re talking about your current position now, however you want to define it). Now, I say that, assuming you can demonstrate a synthesis with your (I’m assuming) highly quantitative analytical knowledge and the work you’d be doing as say, a quantitative analyst. Now, there are still a lot of unknowns for that – do you have any programming background? A graduate degree? Have you had any previous work which is highly correlated with the type of work you’d be doing analyzing investments? Or have you spent your time strictly examining mortality or morbidity tables for plain vanilla life/health carriers/products, with no knowledge of the investments in the General Account? If your actuarial experience was projecting life expectancies for a pension or for other purposes of asset-liability matching, that is an easier leap for a finance HR person to understand.
I think the issue with projecting is that this industry has a WIDE array of outcomes (this was BlackOmen’s idea earlier when he was talking about the Gini Coefficient). There’s very, very few positions which can reliably be seen as an “apprentice/master” track. Many outcomes are, quite frankly, invented as people go along. For instance, Analyst X is working under the tutelage of Manager Y for 5 years. Manager Y is entrenched. Analyst X sees that he will need to wait for Manager Y to get run over by a Mack truck before he gets promoted, so he says, I can do this myself, I have the skills and the connections now. Analyst X opens up a fund, makes himself Manager X. He pays himself based on his fees and AUM, and this amount depends on how he can talk his book up.
Furthermore, there is the problem I see of many who want to “break into finance” who don’t necessarily appreciate that there are those who create in the industry, and then there are those who sell. Some do both, but let’s start with the idea of the creators – researchers, analysts, PMs, product designers, etc. It may very well be the case that these guys also need to sell, but what gets their juices going is to create. These are the types of people who get aggravated by hearing stuffed shirt-types talk about “boiling it down to a few bullet points.” The others are the people that sell. Many people see movies or hear stories about big-shot Goldman or JP Morgan types on a bluetooth in NYC “putting deals together,” and the like, and this is what they think about finance. Chances are, they are thinking of the sellers, the dealmakers. These guys get paid, but may not know sh!t from shinola about the technical details of anything they’re talking about. I’m taking with your actuarial background that you would be thinking of becoming a creator, not a seller. But it is crucial to understand what you want to be so that you can sharpen your job search when you ultimately come in.
I’m talking around the subject, again because there’s no clear cut guide to pricing people in this industry. But I will say this, I know “quant analysts” of varying rank working on the asset management side on everything from a '40-Act currency strategy to a private hedge fund, making anywhere in the range (total comp) of $175-$400k (none of these guys is older than, I would estimate, late 40s). Additionally, I know a bunch of different PMs who are pinching serious bank, but the income skew really shows itself at this level - some dudes making what some of the analysts I’ve mentioned make, and some making well in excess of a million in total comp (so many factors there it’s ridiculous though – is the guy a “star” manager that headlines the fund company, is the guy managing a giant amount of AUM, etc.).
In sum, I would have to say that if you enter the industry with your background and make less than mid-100’s, you are selling yourself short. As far as where you go from there, that’s just a function of how awesome you want to be and how lucky you get.
