A good salary isn’t everything, but it sure is nice!

Of course, a job should be fun. But it should also bring in money! Anyone who has landed on this Fondsfrauen blog is probably already working in the financial industry or at least considering it. That’s a good decision, since the financial sector not only offers a wide range of interesting career paths, but also pays good salaries.

Women actually earn more
Anyone keeping an eye out for promising jobs within the financial sector should take a look at the savings banks. Savings bank board members not only earn very well, but women seem to have especially strong prospects here. “The compensation of women on savings bank boards was recently significantly higher than that of men. While female board members received a median salary of €498,000, their male colleagues earned €400,000,” wrote Citywire Germany in a news piece in August 2025. Top women therefore earn around 20% more than top men – which is unusual.

Savings banks belong to the public sector, and compared with the public sector as a whole, salaries in the top savings bank tiers are attractive: in 2023 the median salary of male and female top managers at savings banks was €402,000 – more than double the amount earned in other areas of the public sector.

Promoting women with concrete targets
The Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe has also explicitly committed itself to promoting women. Earlier this year, a meeting was held by the financial group with the red “S,” attended by the speakers of the S-FiF network (the women’s network “Sparkassen Women in Leadership”) and DSGV President Prof. Dr. Ulrich Reuter.

At the meeting, discussions focused on how to bring more women into board and leadership positions within the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe. “In the business strategy of the savings banks, a target value of 10% female board members by 2027 has been defined. For female managers excluding board members, the target is 35% by 2027,” wrote the Sparkassen magazine finanz informatik.

One outcome of the meeting was the identification of five areas of action in which suitable measures and initiatives will be introduced over the next two years to remove existing barriers to equal opportunities. The Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe intends to continue this exchange in the future.

Ambitious goals, but the road is long
The goals sound ambitious, but the road still seems long. At the end of January 2024, only 7.8% of all savings bank board members in Germany were women, according to an analysis by Barkow Consulting . That corresponds to 67 women compared to 791 men. Compared with the previous year, this is an increase of more than one percentage point, but at this pace, there’s still a long way to go. We therefore welcome the fact that apparently, when it comes to top women’s salaries, an extra incentive is being offered in order to bring more women into leadership positions.

Related articles: