It’s bonus season here in New York City, and that means the Ferrari dealership over on Park Avenue has been putting an extra buff on its showroom models. 

The paying of bonuses got me wondering: how much more do investment banks pay than commercial banks, and that includes commercial banks with investment banking businesses? So I delved into some salary data from Glassdoor.com, which is a nice site I came across that offers salary information for US companies.

The short answer is the pay is about 11% better at investment banks, as of this week. I calculated this by looking at the pay for employees with the “vice president” at nine companies: in commercial banking, Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup, HSBC, and JP Morgan Chase; and in investment banking, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, and Bank of New York Mellon. (Bony Mellon is kind of a hybrid, but go with me.) For the commercial banks, the average VP pay, including bonuses, was $142,526, while VPs at the investment banks make an average of $158,559 per year, again including bonuses. Deutsche Bank was the highest paying bank among those I looked at.

I readily admit that my survey wasn’t the most scientific. VPs at, say, Deutsche, might have a greater role than at perhaps Bank of America (where they earn $116,137 per annum). But suffice it to say, the investment banks are still paying more, despite all the tumult and uproar over compensation. And just to put their pay into perspective, at the four commercial banks I looked at, a teller makes an average of $11.30 per hour or $21,736 per year.