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Only 41% of financial services professionals satisfied with salary

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28 May 2026 by Alex Burke, ifa

Article link: https://www.ifa.com.au/only-41-per-cent-of-financial-services-professionals-satisfied-with-salary-hays/

Hays' FY26/27 Salary Guide, released today, reveals mounting frustrations with current remuneration standards across the financial services sector.

Just 41 per cent of financial services professionals are satisfied with their current salary, according to the Hays FY26/27 Salary Guide, and 30 per cent are either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied.

Hays’ overview for the sector found that salary growth has been relatively modest over the past 12 months, with 26 per cent of workers receiving pay rises of between 2.5 and five percent. Another 23 per cent reported no change to their salary, and 12 per cent received an increase of up to 2.4 per cent.

Within financial planning specifically, Hays identified the typical salary for nine measured roles. Averaged across all regions, these are:

  • Client services: $77,500
  • Paraplanner: $83,500
  • Senior paraplanner: $99,375
  • Associate adviser: $88,750
  • Financial planner: $106,875
  • Senior financial planner: $128,125
  • Financial planning manager: $141,000
  • Head of financial planning: $182,500
  • Practice development manager: $145,625

While only 14 per cent of financial services workers changed employers in the past year, those who did cited a lack of career progression (38 per cent) and low salary (36 per cent) as the biggest motivating factors.

Commenting on the latest figures, Hays APAC chief executive Matthew Dickason said: “Employers shouldn’t confuse low mobility with low dissatisfaction. Only one in five changed jobs last year, yet one in three say there’s no clear promotion structure, and pay growth is only just tracking inflation. The conditions for a retention problem are building underneath stable turnover numbers.”

“Workers are staying put out of caution, not contentment. Progression pathways remain unclear, pay is largely stagnant in real terms, and underlying dissatisfaction is building quietly.”

Salary discussions have proved a particularly important part of the broader talent pipeline issue within advice as small businesses – which make up the bulk of the sector – due to the widespread fear that businesses could go through the process of training up a professional year (PY) adviser and then leave as soon as they finish for another firm that can offer a higher salary.

The challenge is that these fears are not unfounded as Adviser Ratings’ 2025 Advice Landscape Report found that a quarter of advisers who commenced on the financial adviser (FAR) within the last two years had already switched licensees or practices.

The FAAA has called on Government several times to introduce a $10,000 stipend for businesses to take on PYs, mimicking arrangements available in other sectors, but this has yet to come to fruition and, given the Government’s stance on cost cutting in the latest Federal Budget, there is little hope of seeing anything like this in the near future.

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