Report: CCO Salaries Up 2.7%

A new salary survey finds that median chief compliance officer pay is up 2.7 percent this year — and while 40 percent of compliance officers say they are worried about job security, strong majorities also say they feel heard by senior management and would pursue compliance as a career again if they were starting over.

So says the 2025 Chief Compliance Officer Compensation Report from recruitment firm BarkerGilmore, published on Wednesday. The report surveyed more than 260 chief compliance officers across a range of industries and organizations, and is a good resource if you’re looking for benchmarking data before you head into your next performance review.

(Disclosure: I have done paid work for BarkerGilmore in the past producing webinars on career issues in compliance. BarkerGilmore did not pay me to write this post, nor did anyone there see it before I wrote it.)

The 2.7 percent increase in salary this year compares to a 5.1 percent increase in 2024, so the rate of salary growth for compliance officers has decelerated. Still, BarkerGilmore surveyed compliance officers across eight major business sectors, and all eight did show growth in median pay. See Figure 1, below.

 

 

The report also broke out median total compensation by industry. CCOs in the tech sector led the way with median total compensation of $777,000, which seems incredible until you remember that CCOs in the tech field probably get lots of quite lucrative equity grants as part of the package. Nonprofit CCOs had the lowest median compensation at $253,500 because it is the nonprofit sector, after all. I still love those CCOs for the good work they do. See Figure 2, below.

 

 

Another interesting item: female CCOs received a higher base salary ($279,000) than male CCOs ($275,000). The men, however, received a larger annual bonus ($107,500) than the woman ($100,000). So total cash compensation for male CCOs was $382,500, slightly higher than $379,000 for female CCOs.

Beyond the Salary Numbers

The BarkerGilmore survey asked several questions on how CCOs feel about their jobs and careers, too. 

First, 39 percent of respondents were either “very” or “somewhat” concerned about job security. That still leaves a healthy 61 percent who are not concerned, which is good news — but the 39 percent figure in this survey echoes a previous one BarkerGilmore conducted in April, where 35 percent (in a poll of 400 compliance officers at all career levels) felt that the job market had turned negative over the prior six months.

“This suggests the current economic environment is of concern to compliance professionals, despite the essential role their function plays at most companies,” said John Gilmore, managing partner at the firm. 

Compliance officers also wish they had more resources so you could do a better job, although I’m not sure we needed a survey to tell us that. Eighty percent of respondents said their performance is at least somewhat constrained by lack of resources or staffing, including 21 percent who said their performance was “always” constrained by resources. You remaining 20 percent who apparently have no resource constraints, please write in and tell us how you win your budget battles with your CFO.

On the other hand, 69 percent of survey respondents said they are viewed as trusted advisers by their senior management team, or reported that their advice is always followed. And a whopping 73 percent said they would still pursue compliance again as a career if they were starting over. 

So yes, right now lots of compliance officers are antsy about their jobs; but that’s probably more a reflection of current economic conditions (which have gone haywire) than corporations not needing the capabilities that strong compliance functions provide. “The longer-term outlook for the profession is extremely positive, based on our survey, recent polling, and search assignment volume,” Gilmore said.

I tend to agree.

As I’ve written in these pages many times before, strong ethics and compliance functions are about more than compliance with specific regulations. They’re also about savvy risk assessment, coherent policy management, and robust corporate cultures that bring issues to management so those issues can be addressed. 

The need for those things is not going to recede any time soon, and figuring out those challenges is an endlessly fascinating and engaging endeavor. So I think those 73 percent who would still pursue a career in compliance all over again are making a perfectly sensible bet.