Why young women expect their bonuses to increase most of everyone after 2025
The financial services industry is usually associated with masculine imagery - they're called finance bros for a reason. Risk-taking, relentless optimism, permanent confidence. Testosterone overdose. Is that how you see finance? Because you really, really shouldn't.
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We asked 2,000 financial services professionals how they expected their bonus to increase (or decrease) after 2025 in our Bonus Expectations survey. And it was Female respondents that were optimistic about their bonuses than male ones.
It’s the first time we’ve seen this happen. Historically, in all of our surveys (including bonus expectations, but also beyond) men have been both more aggressive and optimistic – not only for their bonuses, but also in moving jobs and other metrics. Clearly, that has changed.
Also interestingly, the optimism gap – the difference between expected male and female bonus increases, which was 5.9 percentage points - tightened considerably compared to 2025 (8.0 percentage points) and 2024 (when it was 11.4 percentage points). Our sample sizes did not change considerably across those years, indicating perhaps that women were occupying more of a “normal” distribution across the financial services hierarchy and its various subsectors.
Bonus expectations are also are heavily tied to age (and, by proxy, experience).
As in previous years, there was a very clear trend: younger, less experienced professionals told us they expect their bonuses to increase faster than their more experienced colleagues. This is partly due to promotions – analysts becoming associates see a jump in their bonuses irrespective of performance.
On the other hand, older respondents to our survey were more likely to be at the peak of their careers. This means that any bonus changes are related to their performance, rather than a promotion.
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