A quarter of U.S. financial firms now tie raises, bonuses or promotions to employees' AI skills, according to a survey of 500 finance HR professionals by Selby Jennings.
Key Points:
- A quarter of surveyed financial firms link raises, bonuses or promotions to AI proficiency.
- Some 30% now require staff to disclose AI use in formal performance reviews.
- The recruiter expects rules on AI-linked pay to become clearer by next year.
Selby Jennings Findings
Another 30% of the firms in the poll require staff to disclose their use of artificial intelligence tools in formal performance reviews, the survey showed. Some 42% have drawn up formal criteria for judging employees' AI skills, while 30% have created new roles or departments dedicated to proving that their AI spending actually pays off. Censuswide conducted the poll for the recruiter from Aug. 19 to Aug. 26, and the results point to a wider push by financial firms to see tangible returns on their AI investments.
The practice is more common at fintech startups and smaller firms than at large, brand-name banks and trading houses, Jacob Summers, the recruiter's head of tech recruiting, said. In hiring decisions, AI skills now count nearly four times as much as an applicant's college.
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Dylan Gomez's Forecast
Dylan Gomez, an executive director at Selby Jennings, said companies have moved past simply checking whether their workers use AI tools at all.
They now monitor their impact on output and business results. No set formula yet decides how much pay depends on AI use and performance, but Gomez said he expects that link to become more clearly defined by next year.
In many organizations, the job of monitoring that work falls to managers.
Ben Hodzic, a managing director at the firm, said most companies tracked none of this a year ago, and that firms now want ongoing proof that their AI investments produce results. Vetting new talent remains hard for many HR teams, as half of respondents said the share of underqualified candidates they interview grew over the past year and 31% said no one in-house can confidently judge AI hires.
PwC AI Poll
Earlier this year, a larger PwC survey of 1,000 U.S. financial services executives found that 58% planned to tie pay directly to AI-enabled productivity, and 86% valued AI training above an MBA for new hires. More than 90% said they were already raising pay for staff with AI skills. Some 61% said they would also offer more performance-based pay to those employees.
The same poll showed firms bracing for leaner staffs, with nearly eight in 10 expecting their workforce to shrink by at least 20% over the next five years and 30% naming entry-level roles as the most exposed to AI.
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