BalancedComp's 2025-2026 Annual Comp Report helps you fine-tune pay strategies for a changing financial landscape. Inside, you'll find the latest trends and compensation insights designed to help HR professionals and executives make data-driven decisions with confidence. You'll also get a closer look at the people and culture behind BalancedComp—the team making data work for people.
Human Resources is continually steering a ship through choppy water. There is a tight labor market, inflation is nibbling at margins, and more economic fog is expected on the horizon. And now, it includes a flatlining salary increase budget.
Each year brings new goals and new ways to reward performance.
This report shows how your incentive plans compare across the
banking industry. With average and median incentive pay for
more than 50 benchmark positions by asset size, it helps you
design programs that drive performance and promote equity.
Use these percentages to assess last year’s results and set
targets that motivate and retain top talent. BalancedComp
clients can also upload these percentages as market incentives
for their positions to analyze Total Cash Compensation
Comparison (wages + incentive) / (midpoint + market
incentive).
Setting new goals means finding better ways to reward
performance. This report shows how your incentive plans
compare across the credit union industry. With average and
median incentive pay for more than 45 benchmark positions by
asset size, it helps you design programs that drive
performance and promote equity.
Use these percentages to assess last year’s results and set
targets that motivate and retain top talent. BalancedComp
clients can also upload these percentages as market incentives
for their positions to analyze Total Cash Compensation
Comparison (wages + incentive) / (midpoint + market
incentive).
Understanding how your teams stack up against peers is key to
effective workforce planning. This report provides the only
nationally available data comparing department headcounts across
financial institutions, including average team sizes, direct
reports to the CEO, and supervisor ratios.
Use these benchmarks to evaluate staffing levels and guide next
year’s workforce strategy with confidence.
Equitable pay is essential to building a strong organization.
This report evaluates average compa ratios for minority and
non-minority employees across all asset sizes for banks and
credit unions, offering a national perspective on pay equity
in the financial industry.
Use these benchmarks to uncover disparities, measure progress,
and ensure fair pay compliance. With this data, your team can
make informed adjustments that promote equity, transparency,
and long-term retention.
Fair pay starts with clear insight. This report evaluates
average compa ratios for men, women, and non-binary employees
across all asset sizes for banks and credit unions, providing
a clear view of gender equity across the financial
industry.
Use these insights to compare pay practices to industry
standards, identify disparities, and strengthen compliance
with fair pay regulations. By understanding the data, you can
adjust compensation with confidence, improving transparency,
equity, and employee trust.
Your HR team keeps your organization running smoothly. This
report provides average HR salaries by asset size, covering
key positions such as Top HR Executive, HR Director, HR
Manager, Recruiter, HR Generalist, and HR Specialist.
Use this data to compare your HR team’s pay to industry
standards, ensure competitive compensation, and attract and
retain top talent within your HR department.
Employee retention tells the story of an organization’s
stability. This report shows how your turnover compares to
industry averages for your asset size, tracking trends from
2020 to today.
Use these insights to see how your retention rates align with
the market and identify opportunities to strengthen workforce
stability across your institution.
Understanding how leadership pay aligns with employee wages is
key to building a transparent and equitable workplace. This
report shows how CEO base pay compares to employee wages across
all asset sizes for banks and credit unions, offering a clear
view of industry averages.
Use these insights to evaluate executive compensation,
strengthen pay equity, and support a culture of fairness within
your organization.
96.9%
7.4 Years
78,352
3.8
134 Years
6.15
9,915
2,270
99.94%
73,302
The BalancedComp app comes with job descriptions for more than 300 industry positions, which you can modify and incorporate when building your own.
Our team's goal is to make your day easier, more productive, and maybe even a little more fun. Here's your exclusive look at the most exciting updates of the year—each designed to supercharge your experience.
After years of client requests, we've added new DOI minority status subgroups to give you more flexibility and accuracy when tracking workforce diversity. In addition to the original “Minority/Non-Minority” selection, you can now specify African American, American Indian, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, or Two or more (multi-racial). These updates make reporting more granular while keeping the original options available if you prefer not to get that specific. We encourage clients to update employee records to take full advantage of these new options, and you can learn more about importing your data here.
This year we've taken the Turnover Report Peer Data to the next level. We now include peer averages for every asset size and industry dating all the way back to 2020. Previously, peer data was limited to the last complete year, but this expanded historical view allows you to see trends over time and better understand how your turnover compares to your peers. This enhancement provides a much richer perspective for strategic workforce planning.
We've made it easier and faster to participate in the BalancedComp Salary and Incentive Survey. Now, you can start your survey inside the BalancedComp app and it will prefill all the information we already have - employee details, positions, and departments, which we will try to automatch to benchmark positions. This gives you a running start, cutting the time to complete the survey by more than 50% and reducing the need for manual uploads or data matching. Prefilled surveys help you get straight to verifying data, making participation simpler and more efficient.
Managing Results Plans and Templates just got a lot easier this year. You can now add, edit, and delete core competencies, objectives, special projects, and training modules in bulk, making it simple to ensure consistency across all plans. These views are also perfect for reviewing and comparing content at a glance. Previously, making these updates often required contacting BalancedComp or using a custom script, but now you can manage plan and template content quickly and entirely on your own.
We've always prided ourselves on the resources we make available to clients, from training and webinars to the Annual Compensation Report, Knowledge Base, and position grading request portal. But we realized these tools were spread across different locations, so we created a centralized Resource Center. Now everything you need is in one place, including training, upcoming webinars, support tools, and key reports. We've also added an introduction to all our consultants with access to their calendars, so you can get what you need, when you need it, all from anywhere in the app.
We're excited to introduce empowHR, a private, built-in
community for BalancedComp clients. Inspired by requests
from FinComp attendees over the past two years, this
forum is designed to help clients connect with peers,
share best practices, and foster meaningful
conversations across a wide range of topics, from
compensation, performance management, and DEI to
professional development, culture, benefits, and
more.
empowHR isn't just a place to talk; it's a resource. Our
consultants will receive notifications on conversations
and can jump in to provide guidance when needed, and
every category and subcategory is carefully organized to
make it easy to find relevant discussions. Whether
you're looking for ideas on career pathing, recruiting
strategies, policy guidance, or just inspiration from
what other financial institutions are doing, EmpowHR
gives you a pre-vetted, trusted space to learn,
collaborate, and grow together.
We've added new login reporting in BalancedResults to
give you better insight into system engagement. For
performance reviews, you can now see how many times
supervisors and employees have logged in during the
review cycle, helping contextualize participation.
Company
admins can also access a new login report showing
monthly activity for everyone at their organization. You
can filter by employees, supervisors, or company admins
to see patterns of engagement, identify when users are
most active, and know when to encourage participation.
These reports make it easier to track engagement and
ensure everyone is getting the most out of
BalancedResults.
The Chief Evaluator is a board-facing, consulting-led
solution designed to bring clarity, confidence, and
consistency to CEO compensation and performance reviews.
Unlike traditional approaches, this process is led by
BalancedComp Consultants who guide the Board in defining
performance plans, aligning on expectations, and setting
market-based KPIs, all administered by a trusted third
party to ensure fairness and transparency. The CEO
contributes to goal-setting and provides input, but the
process is fully Board-owned, removing guesswork from a
high-stakes and often contentious process.
Built on peer data, structured Board education, and
customizable KPIs, the Chief Evaluator helps Boards
measure performance, set defensible targets, and
calculate final outcomes tied to compensation. By
combining expert guidance with a flexible framework,
this tool ensures all stakeholders know how performance
will be evaluated, delivering a fair, transparent, and
aligned result every year.
This year's symposium was a powerhouse of inspiration,
equipping HR professionals with cutting-edge tools to lead
with confidence, navigate economic challenges, and
revolutionize compensation strategies in a dynamic
industry.
The energy was palpable, the insights were transformative,
and the connections forged will shape the future of HR
leadership.
financial institutions
wage differentials
benchmark positions
Over 300 banks and credit unions across the US pay and evaluate their employees using the BalancedComp suite of products.