Chief compliance officers, who often play a pivotal role in supporting fund-board oversight, reported receiving a significant bump up in total compensation for the second consecutive year, according to the annual MPI Mutual Fund CCO Compensation Survey released in June 2025.
The report drew data from 59 CCOs as US-based advisers that collectively represent more than 3,100 funds and $4.3trn in assets.
Total compensation for CCOs who responded to the survey rose from $500,664 in 2023 to $547,940 in 2024. That represents income growth of 9.4% – a full percentage point higher than the 8.4% increase the year before.
Single-year increases could be anomalous, but the majority of CCOs who participated in surveys during 2023 and 2024 (45 out of 59 total) reported an even bigger boost – 11.2% compared to the previous year, according to Jay Keeshan, a partner at Management Practice, Inc. (MPI) and principal investigator behind the Report.
That 11.2% is the biggest single-year increase the survey has found during the past eight years, Keeshan said.
Last year’s report showed that CCOs who responded to surveys several years in a row got an average boost in pay of 4.5% during 2023 after a drop of 0.4% in 2022 and increases of at least 4% during each of the six previous years.
“The main trend I observed is that the growth in industry AUM appears to be directly affecting CCO compensation,” Keeshan said. “After a down year in 2022, in both the markets and CCO pay, 2023 and 2024 have seen steady and significant increases.”
Contributing factors
Compensation levels varied so widely among survey respondents, for so many reasons, that it can be misleading to judge the progress of all CCOs only by looking at market performance or average pay raises across the whole industry, however, Keeshan said.
CCOs reported compensation levels varied over a wide range – from a low of $100,000 to a high of nearly $2 million.
Where individual CCOs fell within that range, and the potential for annual increases, depended on a long list of factors including the number of funds or portfolios being overseen, the geographic location of the adviser, its emphasis on either retail or institutional distribution and the number of sub-advisers, as well as total AUM and market performance.
More upside in bonuses
Increases in compensation, in fact, tend to come from changes in areas other than a CCO’s base pay, which remains relatively stable, Keeshan said.
“Where we’ll see it is in either the bonus or in some sort of equity grant,” Keeshan said.
While 95% of CCOs responding to the survey said bonuses are part of their overall compensation packages, those who work at larger companies report bonuses that make up a higher percentage of their total compensation – and a bigger part of pay increases – than is true for smaller companies.
“It’s the big guys that did particularly well in the past year or two because their firms are really seeing some big gains in assets,” Keeshan noted.
The size of bonuses for CCOs, who often report both to an adviser’s corporate board and fund boards of trustees, continues to depend heavily on input from both, Keeshan said.
In the latest survey, 81% of CCOs said the size of a bonus depended heavily on overall corporate performance. But 89% said influence from management played a major role and 61% cited the impact of feedback from fund boards of directors.
CCO support of fund boards
Similarly to the previous year, the report also revealed that CCOs continue to support the board in ways beyond their typical duties, with 34% specifically stating this. Survey respondents said support of fund boards continues to be a major focus of their responsibilities.
That support, according to 71% of CCOs surveyed, included supporting fund boards with assistance at “risk management support;” 34% reported providing “legal support,” and an additional 38% listed much of their fund-board support under the category of “global responsibilities.”
However, 34% said they routinely support fund boards in ways that go beyond their normal duties, especially when providing support for the annual 15(c) contract renewal process, monitoring soft dollar expenditures, or other tasks of interest to a particular board.
MPI already sees some net-positive statistics for 2025 that indicate the increases in CCO compensation surveys identified in 2023 and 2024 will continue during 2025, Keeshan said, assuming nothing changes during the second half of the year that could negate those indications, at least.
“With everything we’re seeing, it would indicate that as goes the market, and as goes the industry, so goes CCO comp,” Keeshan said.
