The fate of bank bonuses has been of much discussion in 2025. Who will get more than last year? Who will get less? It’s hard to be certain – but there are some traders whose fate seems more certain.
Foreign exchange (FX) salespeople & traders are likely to see a bumper year for bonuses. The reason for that is simple: they’ve had a fantastic year for revenues.
Data from market intelligence provider Tricumen suggests the average operating revenue generated by a FX & Local Markets full-time front-office employee in the first nine months of 2025 was $6.7m. That’s 70% higher than the $3.9m in revenues that Tricumen says front office FX professionals each generated on average last year.
Tricumen credited the excellent FX performance to the market’s strong volumes, hedging activities in “safe currencies”, and widening gaps between central bank rate policies between different currency issuers.
Traders on other desks fared less well. Tricumen estimated that commodities sales & trading people, for example, generated 21% less revenue per employee in the first nine months than they did in the first nine months of 2024.
Some of the happiest new faces, especially compared to the end of Q2, will be the investment bankers – equity capital markets and M&A bankers in particular. At the end of H1 2025, Tricumen estimated that these two groups were 11% down and flat (0%) on their per head performance in 2024. However, at the end of Q3 Tricumen said their revenues were 3% and 14% up, respectively, implying that healthy bonuses will await if this performance continues through to the new year.
It’s hard to tell how the year will end, but it seems that things are going well. Trump’s administration is as capricious as ever – meaning that traders have volatility to profit from – but banks are, at the same time, managing to convince their banking clients to get deals through the pipeline. Throw in the productivity benefits of artificial intelligence, and for those who can keep their jobs, bank bonuses might have a new golden age over the next few years.
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