Fundster bonus pools in 2024 will probably still be noticeably below their levels from four years ago, at least according to the folks at a New York City-based, financial services-focused compensation consulting firm.

The team at Johnson Associates predicts, in their May 2024 "Financial Services Compensation: First Quarter Trends and Year-End Projections" report, that at traditional asset managers, incentive compensation this year will be five percent higher than in 2023, thanks to "market appreciation partially offset by outflows in active products." Yet they note that that would still make 2024 fundster bonus pools a bit smaller than in 2022, significantly smaller than in 2021, and nearly 10 percent smaller than in 2020.

The Johnson team predicts that favorable equity markets will boost asset managers' revenues (by boosting AUM), while outflows from fixed income products offset inflows into equity ETFs. They also predict that "scaling alternatives" (which tend to have higher fees) will be a priority for many traditional asset managers. (Of eight unnamed asset managers cited by the Johnson team, seven have increased their alts AUM percentage over the last decade, five of them substantially.)

As for staffing levels, the Johnson team continues to predict overall declines, citing continuing "margin pressures" and focus on "sales compensation design and magnitudes."

"Headcount will trend lower as firms focus on stabilizing margin declines," the Johnson team writes. 

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