What UK Finance Leaders Actually Earn

Four quick fields and it is yours.

What to budget

Lower quartile, median, upper quartile and top decile for six finance grades, so you can position an offer rather than guess at it.

What the package needs

Bonus, long term incentive, healthcare and car allowance, by grade, as the share of people who actually receive each.

CFO or Finance Director

What each step up the ladder costs in cash, and how equity changes between Finance Director and CFO.

Who you are bidding against

Private equity backed against private, and large employer against small, compared at the same grade.

The London question

Where the regional saving actually is, and where it is not.

What they compare your offer against

Last year's pay rises, and how often finance bonuses actually pay out in full.

Every figure comes from 449 salaries submitted directly by UK finance professionals to the Finance Pay Index. There is no job board data in it and no estimates.

Job title dominates finance pay so heavily that most salary surveys end up measuring which grade of person answered the question rather than the thing being asked. Every comparison in this report is made within grade. A gap is only called real when it survives a bootstrap test, and anything resting on fewer than eight responses is withheld.

Finance Pay Index, data to 16 October 2026. Rebuilt from the live Index each edition.