Top Paymasters In India: Investment Banking GCCs Offer Highest Salaries In BFSI Sector, Study Finds

Investment Banking GCCs, or global capability centres, are offering the highest salaries within the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) sector, according to a study by Careernet.

As per the report titled 'BFSI GCCs in India: Salary Benchmarks and Market Trends', investment banking took the lead, displaying "the steepest salary growth" when it came to elevation in job titles and responsibilities.

The report noted that the factors firms consider when providing financial compensation are digital maturity, the strategic contribution of technology to business outcomes, and the scarcity and criticality of niche technical skills.

Job roles within investment banking that involve more technology usage and tech-specific knowledge, such as data scientists, full-stack developers, big data engineers, and DevOps engineers saw the sharpest salary hikes.

Retail and commercial banking, and financial services sectors trailed behind, with the report observing "steady and consistent" salary increases, and "balanced compensation" for services rendered.

According to the report, data scientists in investment banking sector made between Rs 22.1 lakh and Rs 46.9 per year, with those in the retail banking seeing Rs 19.9 lakh–Rs 44.5 lakh as salary amounts, and insurance sector employees earning Rs 18.4 lakh–Rs 44.3 lakh, making slightly lower compensations in comparison.

Full-stack developers received the highest premium in investment banking, with Rs 20.7 lakh at the entry position to Rs 47.5 lakh at the senior level, displaying the importance of these employees who take care of large-scale and mission-critical systems.

Salary compensation for agile leadership positions, such as product owner and scrum master, differ based on sectors, with these roles seeing high salary premiums within investment banking sector, but having a more gradual pay increase in the insurance industry.

Cybersecurity roles also have strong valuations within investment banking, with prominent senior-level pay increases, while compensation growth in the other sectors remained less sharp.

The report uses information from 50,000 professionals working in the ongoing fiscal year 2025-26, across investment banking, retail and commercial banking, financial services and insurance sectors.

It covered the job roles of scientist, big data engineer, product owner, full-stack developer, test engineer, DevOps engineer, scrum master, data analyst and cybersecurity specialist. Experience levels under evaluation spanned from three to five years, to all the way up to 12-16 years.