Performance measurement in asset management houses is coming out of the doldrums, and salaries are heading northwards.

The performance measurement departments of fund managers are stereotypically seen as the refuge of number-crunching geeks assessing the viability of investments, but change is afoot.

Oliver Hinchliffe, senior consultant at Project Partners, which has just completed a salary survey of the sector with i-Performance-Analysis.com, says: “Heads of performance are increasingly thinking more strategically about mobilising teams to be more front-to-middle office focused. Performance measurement is becoming more business critical and qualified people are very employable at the moment.”

Demands spiralling upwards

The problems arising from the credit crunch may have rammed home the importance of performance measurement, reckons Mark Goodey, head of performance at Morley Fund Management: “Market events and volatility and the pressures they bring to asset managers, along with both increasingly complex instruments and data gathering challenges, mean that the demands on investment analysis practitioners are spiralling upwards.”

Performance measurement teams are tipped to grow by 14% this year, according to the survey, but the problem is both attracting and retaining people.

Hankering for the front office

“If you’ve got somebody coming from a really good academic background, they want to be a fund manager,” says Hinchliffe. “The problem is that after people develop the skills in performance, they would like to move to a pure front-office position. I hear it every day, because they work so closely with the fund managers they think they can do it.”

But salaries are becoming a decent proposition. They’ve increased by 11% so far in 2008, with bonuses going up by an average £10k.

A junior performance analyst can command a salary of £30k-£45k, depending on experience, and more senior analysts can expect £45k-£65k, with a possible bonus of 30%. A head of performance with a small team will bring in £70k-£80k, which rises to £100k-£120k with larger management responsibilities. Bonuses are typically 30-50%.