Investment managers make an average 1,500 euros a month on a mutual fund market where profitability is highly dependent on the volume of managed assets.
The salaries earned by local investment managers, which are up to three times lower than on other emerging markets, confirm the burgeoning stage of the Romanian mutual funds industry.
"In Hungary and Poland, the monthly salary of an investment manager is up to three times higher than in Romania. Here, a manager earns somewhere between 1,000 euros and 1,500 euros a month," believes Ilie Cenan, general manager of management company Globinvest, in Cluj.
Earnings of fund managers consists of a fixed salary, which is highly dependent on the volume of assets managed, and a bonus, granted depending on the yield derived by the mutual fund and on the amount of net sales.
"Fund managers are paid based on their performances. On developed markets, in addition to the fixed salary, a fund manager receives a bonus, which is dependent on how much the yield exceeds the benchmark, which is set in comparison to other funds on the market, which are positioned in the same category," says Mihail Ion, chairman of Raiffeisen Asset Management.
Romanian fund managers handle total assets worth around 240 million euros, while their Hungarian counterparts handle over 9.6 billion euros in assets.
In Poland, mutual fund assets exceed 32 billion euros. The difference between salary levels can in part be explained by the large difference between the volumes of assets managed.
"The small volume of assets does not allow management companies to provide adequate salaries to their fund managers. In order to be profitable, a management company needs to handle funds worth over 25 million euros," Globinvest's Cenan adds.
"Salaries are good, for the time being, considering the volume of assets managed, but I th
