Competitive compensation is key to attracting and retaining the best talent for your single family office. Discover the latest trends on relevant pay, benefits and bonus structures in Morgan Stanley’s 2025 benchmarking report.
Improved year-over-year market conditions, including the heightened interest rate environment, drove a rebound in investment team incentive compensation, making it more important than ever for single family offices to offer competitive compensation in order to hire and retain the best possible staff and management team.
“The talent and compensation landscape continues to evolve in the broader family office industry, particularly when it comes to use of long-term incentive compensation. Our research amplifies the importance of having data that highlights trends specific to family offices,” notes Valerie Wong Fountain, Head of Family Office Resources Platform & Partner Management at Morgan Stanley.
Morgan Stanley’s 2025 Single Family Office Compensation report, created in collaboration with Botoff Consulting, provides valuable insights for families and family office professionals as they consider pay levels, benefits and bonus structures for optimal talent acquisition and retention. The report features benchmark compensation data for roles ranging from C-suite leaders to portfolio managers to investment analysts.
Among the key findings:
- For the first time since 2015, co-investment opportunity (57%) surpassed deferred incentive compensation (56%) as the most prevalent payment plan type.
- Use of incentive compensation remained strong with 90% of all firms reporting that employees are eligible for annual incentive or bonus plans.
- Investment-focused firms are more likely to utilize long-term incentive (LTI) vehicles, with 62% of firms reporting use.
- Geographic premiums align with historical trends, with remote workforce considerations being incorporated across markets, including traditional “high-cost,” higher-premium markets.
In addition, readers will learn the most common single family office investment approaches, governance structures and professional services in use today. They’ll also find actionable intelligence on the use of long-term incentive plans and how growing interest in private equity is changing the composition of portfolios.
Request the Morgan Stanley Single Family Office Compensation Report now to gain insight into your compensation approach.
