Executive summary

Welcome to our first annual North American Private Credit Investment Professional Compensation Survey. This survey of 297 private credit investment professionals in North America gathered information on respondents’ cash compensation, bonus, and non-cash compensation.

Together with our surveys of private equity investment professionals, as well as those of private equity–backed CEOs and CFOs, this suite of content provides a look at executive compensation trends across investment types and functional roles.

As we continue to conduct this survey in the coming years, we hope to be able to provide a more robust look at the evolving compensation of these executives.

This digital report includes survey data on respondents’ non-cash compensation as well as the demographics of respondents’ firm types, types of funds, investment strategy, functional role, sector focus, gender, and ethnicity.

North America private credit investment professional compensation, 2023–2025

Forty-six percent of respondents reported an increase in base compensation between 2024 and 2025, a smaller share than those who reported an increase from 2023 to 2024.

Most reported a relatively small increase from 2024: 65% said their increase was 10% or less.

There was a large share of respondents who said they had received larger bonuses in 2024 than they did in 2023. Some 78% of respondents said their bonus for 2024 was greater than it was in 2023, and 70% said the increase they saw in 2024 was more than 10%.

Cash compensation

Compensation in the 75th percentile tends to rise along with respondents’ level and firm AUM across all funds. Compensation was generally as expected.

Average total cash compensation in the upper quartile for managing partners at firms with more than $25 billion in AUM was $4,775,000.

For firms with less than $10 billion in AUM, partners and senior managing directors saw slightly higher total cash compensation in the upper quartile than the managing partners in that same firm size. This is due to lower levels of managing partner responses.

For a complete look at cash base and bonus compensation data by AUM across all funds, download the PDF.

Non-cash compensation

Non-cash compensation is common across all levels of private credit investment professionals. Long-term incentives such as carry in locked-up drawdown vehicles is most common.

Respondents at all but the most junior levels commonly reported that a portion of their cash bonus was deferred, while only 35% of vice presidents said the same.

Among respondents who have a portion of their cash bonus deferred, 20% to 30% is a common share across levels.

Also across levels, carry most often vests at five years; long-term incentives also commonly vest at five or more years, though three years is also common among more senior executives.

Across respondent levels, compensation rarely includes cash or carry clawbacks for bad levers, nor does it usually come from ownership of the firm’s management company.

For a complete look at non-cash compensation data, including BDC distributions and NPV of long-term incentives, download the PDF.

Respondent demographics

Respondents to our survey came from a wide range of firm types, from credit-only asset management firms to single-strategy private credit funds. The types of funds raised by respondents’ firms included public and private business development companies (BDCs), interval funds, and others.

Respondents to our survey also represented a wide range of investment strategies, from direct lending to venture debt and growth credit. Their functional roles included originations, underwriting, and portfolio management, and their focus crossed sectors.

As across all our surveys of investment and finance professionals, the majority of respondents are men and white. However, one-third of the managing partners who responded to our survey identified as Asian or Asian American.

Methodology

For this report, Heidrick & Struggles compiled compensation data from a survey of 297 private credit investment professionals in North America.

In an online survey, we asked participants to provide compensation data from 2023, 2024, and 2025. Non-cash compensation data is available from 2022 to 2024.

All data collected is self-reported by private credit investment professionals and has been aggregated to evaluate trends in compensation packages, including base salary, bonus, and carried interest plans (carry).

In each compensation table, we report the lowest response, lower quartile (25th percentile), mean, upper quartile (75th percentile), and highest response. Please note that the mean can be influenced by particularly high or low data points, especially in small sample sizes. Many firms that use compensation surveys set their compensation targets around or above the upper quartile (75th percentile).

Carried interest is calculated using “carry dollars at work”—the expected return on total carry participation across all vehicles, based on achieving a net 2x return (above hurdle and after fees) in a vehicle charging a 20% performance fee. For example, 7 points (700 bps) of carry (out of a possible 100) in a $500 million fund with 20% carry would result in $7 million of carry dollars at work (500 X 0.2 X 0.07 = 7).

On confidentiality

The North American private credit investment professional compensation survey, 2025, has been conducted on an anonymous basis for individuals and their employers, and the data is reported only anonymously and in aggregate.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Mohd Arsalan for his contributions to this report.

About the author

John Rubinetti (jrubinetti@heidrick.com) is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ New York and Miami offices and a member of the Private Equity Practice.