Recruiting from banks and private equity into a family office

Banks and private equity firms are the main source of family office executives, and the people who move do so for breadth of work, a single stakeholder and better hours rather than for pay. Base salaries at the top of the family office market match institutional levels; total compensation usually does not, unless the office offers carry or co-investment. The adjustment problems the surveys and recruiters report are predictable: a thinner team, informal governance, slower deal flow and a career that depends on one family.

Where family offices recruit

Deloitte's top 10 Family Office trends, 2024 found financial services is the core talent source for 64% of family offices, accounting firms for 44% and consulting for 25%. The KPMG and Agreus 2025 Global Family Office Compensation Benchmark Report records where current CEOs came from: banking was the most common background in continental Europe (35%) and joint most common in the UK (30%, level with accountancy); investment management led in Asia (37%) and Australia (29%); and in the US the most common background was another family office (33%), followed by investment management (13%).

The flow runs mostly one way. Paul Reynolds, who ran Thamesis for sixteen years, told Institutional Investor in 2026 that he had seen many capable people in their forties move into family offices from banks and asset managers because they enjoyed the work, and that younger finance professionals now see the sector as offering better work-life balance.

Why people move

Reynolds described the attractions as intellectual variety, a single stakeholder and relationships with principals built over time. The CNBC report on the family office talent shortage in 2025 found younger candidates still perceive family office work as a retirement job, which attracts mid-career professionals and deters those who want a conventional career.

Family offices compete for the same people as the firms they recruit from. The AlTi and Campden 2025 Family Office Operational Excellence Report noted that offices now compete for talent with RIAs, multi-family offices, banks and the advisers that serve family offices, and that the pool of qualified candidates is not expanding.

How pay compares

Morgan Stanley's 2025 Single Family Office Compensation Report gives a median CIO base of $500,000 and total cash of $896,000, with $1,000,000 total cash above $1bn. Heidrick & Struggles' 2025 survey of 106 US and European investment leaders found US base salaries rose from $471,000 in 2023 to $541,000 in 2025, with an estimated 2025 bonus of $563,000. Those figures are competitive with senior bank roles on cash. The gap opens on long-term pay: institutional private equity professionals expect carry as standard, while Morgan Stanley's 2025 data shows 54% of single family offices have any long-term incentive plan, rising to 71% among investment-focused offices above $1bn. The structures are covered in long-term incentives and carry in family offices.

In Europe the headline gap is wider. Fortune reported in 2024 from Campden Wealth and HSBC data that the average European family office CEO earned $288,000, with families above $1bn paying $370,000 base and an 88% bonus, against an average of $447,000 for private equity-backed CEOs in Heidrick's 2023 survey. Location matters too: Morgan Stanley's 2025 report notes premiums of 15% to 25% over a national baseline in New York and San Francisco.

Adjustment problems

The complaints recruiters hear are consistent. The CNBC report quoted Iris Xu of Jenga saying family offices can appear risky because of informal structure, unclear reporting lines and undefined career progression, and a lawyer who declined a general counsel role because one person could decide to fire him. Tobias Prestel of Prestel and Partner told CNBC that in family offices the trusted person often gets the job rather than the best-qualified one.

For investment professionals specifically, the shift from a team of twenty to a team of three changes the work. Heidrick's 2025 survey found most family office investment teams number five people or fewer. A private equity associate used to a deal team, a portfolio operations group and a compliance function arrives to find all three are the same person. UBS's Global Family Office Report 2026 found only 50% of offices have a documented investment process and 49% have job descriptions, so the recruit often has to write the process before running it. UBS's 2025 report found offices rank personality fit (73%) and trust (72%) above qualifications (52%), which means the institutional CV that got the interview is not what keeps the job.

What offices can do

The offices that recruit well from institutions define the role and decision rights in writing before the search, benchmark cash pay against the right size band using the compensation data, offer a multi-year incentive that gives the recruit a reason to stay past the first portfolio review, and set expectations about pace, team size and the principal's involvement during the process. The failure cases described in retaining non-family executives are mostly cases where one of those was skipped.

Closing

Banks and private equity will remain the main pipeline. The data suggests the cash gap is smaller than assumed at the senior level and the structural gap, in governance and career path, is larger. Offices that close the second are the ones that keep the people they hire.