The top ten Ideal Employers in financial services in 2024-25
Our Ideal Employer report, which was based on the 8,000 responses to our global Ideal Employer survey, had a definitive result: JPMorgan is deemed as the unequivocal best place to work in financial services.
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While JPMorgan is the winner by a considerable margin in our ranking this year (as it was last year), the votes for positions in the rest of the top ten were less widely spread. The gap in votes between first-placed JPMorgan and second-placed Goldman Sachs is nearly five times larger than the gap between Goldman and tenth-placed Allianz, for example.
Bank of America ranks third this year, despite being outside the top ten last year. BofA is considered a very-well-rounded employer, with culture & integrity and wellbeing metrics higher than most banks. On the other hand, however, its compensation potential is considered lower than its rivals’.
America Express and Deloitte also entered the rankings at seventh and ninth, respectively. Culture and wellbeing are considered a bonus at American Express. And Deloitte, like other professional services firms, is additionally considered an extremely rewarding place to pursue a career.
Despite being one of the biggest investment banks in the world, Morgan Stanley has dropped out of our top ten, to 13th. That’s not an anomaly – last year, it was only 9th, and behind firms such as Allianz, the asset manager.
Morgan Stanley’s qualitative scores follow the same pattern as JPMorgan’s, but it scored lower on almost every metric. It scores decently for compensation and career opportunities, but less well on culture and wellbeing. Even compensation and careers aren’t as highly rated as at JPMorgan.
Our Ideal Employers outside of the top ten also reflect the changing nature of financial services. The United Arab Emirates have become a more appealing place to work and as a consequence, native firms such as the Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank are more popular as potential employers than previously.
Generally speaking, Ideal Employers are also aspirational.
Respondents to our survey were asked if they had ever worked for their Ideal Employers. Overwhelmingly, the answer is “no” – less than 22% of votes cast are for employers that respondents either work for currently or had worked for previously.
When filtering votes for respondents who had work experience at their selected ideal employer, the indomitable JPMorgan still topped the ranking.
Below it, however, there are substantial changes, with Goldman, Blackrock, and American Express all dropping out of the top ten, and three universal banks taking their place: Deutsche Bank, UBS, and ABN Amro. Deloitte also features in our top 10 based on votes from employees with experience of working for their ideal employers. These votes clearly favor employers with a large current workforce - Deloitte currently has around 457,000 global employees, for instance.
There are therefore two types of firms in our ranking: aspirational and experienced.
Outside of the top ten, popular firms such as Citadel, Revolut and Jane Street are aspirational. Their headcounts are small. Only 6.2%, 8.1%, and 5.5% of respondents who consider those firms their ideal employers had any experience working there.
41% of people who consider BNP Paribas their Ideal Employer have some kind of work experience there. 41% of people who consider Standard Chartered their ideal employer filled the same criteria. 35% of votes for HSBC met the same criteria. Those three banks combined have nearly 500,000 employees around the world.
It’s also worth noting that respondents approach their first and second choice Ideal Employers differently. Respondents are more likely to select first-choice Ideal Employers that they have experience of (74% of selections hadn’t been worked for), while second-choice employers are slightly more likely to be aspirational (82% of selections hadn’t been worked for).
Demographically speaking, older respondents (those over 50) are more than twice as likely to select a firm they had worked for as their Ideal Employer than those under 25. Men are also generally more likely to select an employer that they had already worked for as their Ideal Employer.
Download the full 2024 eFinancialCareers Ideal Employer report here.
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