The Datum Report

Occupation 2422 · Professional occupations

Finance and investment analysts and advisers

Half of full-time finance and investment analysts and advisers in the UK earn more than £50,330 a year, and half earn less.

Finance and investment analysts and advisers advise customers, who may be individuals, companies or specialist groups, on the purchase of investments, insurance, mortgages, pensions and other financial services and products.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic requirements although entrants usually possess GCSEs/S grades and a degree in a relevant subject is sometimes required. Training may be undertaken in-house or entrants may attend courses run by professional institutions. Registration with a regulatory authority is required in some positions.

What the work involves

• predicts the likely long- and short-term future performance of securities and other financial products and advises upon what will be an appropriate investment for their clients
• analyses the financial position of clients, considering outgoings, dependants and commitments
• advises on the relative merits of pension schemes, insurance policies and mortgages that best meet the needs of clients given their personal circumstances
• monitors information on the socio-economic environment and interprets the implications of such information for their clients
• prepares summary reports of findings for fund managers
• keeps up to date with financial products, legislation and requirements for compliance with the relevant regulatory authority
• identifies and attracts new clients by arranging visits and explaining the benefits of financial products

Also called

Credit risk analyst · Financial adviser · Financial consultant · Mortgage adviser · Pensions consultant

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for finance and investment analysts and advisers, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 10 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Chartered and certified accountants · Taxation experts