FIG Investment Banking: A Founder and Career Guide to the Financial Institutions Group

If you own a community bank, an RIA, a specialty lender, an insurance brokerage, or a fintech platform and you are starting to think about a sale, fig investment banking is the corner of Wall Street built specifically for your transaction. The Financial Institutions Group (FIG) is the coverage practice at every major bank and most middle market boutiques that advises depositories, insurers, asset managers, broker dealers, payments processors, and specialty finance firms on M&A, capital raises, and strategic alternatives. FIG bankers use a valuation toolkit nobody else on the Street uses fluently (price to tangible book, embedded value, regulatory capital walk forwards) and they spend their careers reading Federal Reserve bank holding company supervision letters, OCC examination guidance, and NAIC model laws. This guide explains how FIG works in 2026 for founders evaluating advisors and for analysts evaluating the group as a career.

What Is FIG (Financial Institutions Group) Investment Banking?

FIG is the industry coverage group that owns the client relationship with anyone that takes deposits, writes insurance policies, manages assets, runs a broker dealer, processes payments, or lends balance sheet capital. Coverage means the bankers track every public filing, attend the trade conferences, build internal pitch material on the regulatory landscape, and maintain relationships with CEOs, CFOs, treasurers, and board members. When a deal happens, the FIG team partners with product groups (M&A, ECM, DCM, debt finance, financial sponsors) to execute. The FIG team owns the client; the product team owns the mechanics.

The breadth of FIG is wider than outsiders assume. A senior banker in the financial institutions group at Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan can pitch a community bank in Ohio, a Bermuda reinsurer, a Boston mutual fund complex, a Memphis specialty lender, and a San Francisco payments unicorn in the same week. Each conversation pulls a different sub team, but they all share the same coverage banner. That is why most FIG groups at scale split into four sub practices: banks and depositories, insurance, asset and wealth management, and specialty finance and fintech. We walk through all four below.

The reason FIG exists as a discrete group rather than living inside generalist coverage is simple. Banks and insurers are not industrial businesses. The asset side of a bank balance sheet is the productive engine, the liability side funds it, and net interest income is the revenue line. Interest is not an expense to add back. Regulatory capital, set under the Basel III framework published by the Bank for International Settlements, caps how much business an institution can write. The standard analyst training playbook of EBITDA multiples and discounted cash flow does not work cleanly here, so the entire toolkit is different. That is what makes FIG technical, and that is why founders of regulated businesses get a meaningfully better process when they hire a banker who lives inside the FIG world.

Who FIG Bankers Cover: The Six Sub-Sectors

The classic FIG taxonomy is four pillars, but in practice the work splits into six sub sectors once you separate market infrastructure and fintech from the rest. Owners evaluating a process should know which sub sector their business sits in, because the buyer universe, valuation framework, and regulatory clock are different in each.

Banks and depositories is the historical core of FIG. Roughly 4,400 FDIC-insured banks operate in the United States as of 2026, down from more than 8,500 in 2000, and the universe of likely counterparties for any one target is small. The work is intensely relationship driven. Keefe Bruyette and Woods (KBW), now owned by Stifel, was built on this beat. Insurance is its own animal because the financial statements look different. Loss reserves, deferred acquisition costs, and statutory capital have no analog in commercial banking, and the NAIC coordinates state level regulation through model laws and the risk based capital (RBC) framework.

Asset and wealth management has been the busiest FIG sub practice for a decade, driven by registered investment adviser (RIA) consolidation, alternatives roll ups, and traditional managers buying private market capability. Specialty finance and fintech are the fastest growing pillars, and FT Partners has built a billion dollar advisory franchise focused exclusively on fintech and payments (more on FT Partners further down). Market infrastructure (exchanges, clearinghouses, data and analytics providers) is the most software like part of FIG, with EBITDA multiples that look more like SaaS than depository banking.

Why FIG Is Technically Different From Every Other Coverage Group

Here is the bluntest way to explain the difference. In TMT, energy, healthcare, industrials, and consumer coverage, the valuation conversation almost always starts with EBITDA. The acronym means earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, and the interest add back is fundamental to the metric. In FIG, interest is not a financing cost to strip out. For a bank, net interest income (the spread between the yield on loans and securities and the cost of deposits and borrowings) is the top line revenue stream. Stripping out interest to calculate EBITDA would erase most of the income statement.

That single distinction cascades. Banks are valued on price to tangible book (P/TBV) because regulatory capital is the binding constraint on growth. If a bank wants to grow loans by 10 percent, it generally has to grow tangible common equity by 10 percent to stay within Basel III ratios. Life insurers are valued on embedded value because profits emerge over decades. Property and casualty insurers live or die by combined ratio (losses plus expenses divided by premiums earned, where below 100 percent means profitable on underwriting alone). Asset managers trade on percent of AUM, with management and incentive fees compounding into intrinsic value. Specialty finance lenders trade on book value adjusted for credit reserves. Fintech splits the difference: mature processors trade on EBITDA, growth stage neobanks trade on revenue.

The accounting itself is also different. Bank financials carry an allowance for credit losses (the FASB CECL framework requires expected loss provisioning over the life of the loan), securities marked at amortized cost (HTM) versus fair value through OCI (AFS), goodwill from prior acquisitions, and core deposit intangibles that amortize through the income statement. Insurance financials carry policyholder reserves, deferred acquisition costs, unearned premium, and statutory surplus that is different from GAAP equity. A FIG analyst who cannot read an FFIEC call report or an NAIC statutory filing cannot model the business. That technical barrier is what keeps the group narrow, specialized, and well paid.

The FIG Regulatory Stack: Fed, OCC, FDIC, NAIC, FINRA, Basel III

Every FIG transaction has at least one regulator, and most have several. This is the single biggest practical difference between FIG and the rest of investment banking. A bank cannot close a merger without Federal Reserve approval. An insurance company cannot change control without approval from the state insurance commissioner of domicile and every state where it holds a material market position. A broker dealer change of control requires FINRA approval. A money transmitter sale often requires consent from all 50 state regulators plus FinCEN. Mishandling the regulatory work product can delay a deal by six to twelve months or kill it.

For bank deals, Section 3 of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 governs acquisitions of bank holding companies. The Federal Reserve evaluates competitive effects, financial and managerial resources, convenience and needs of the community, financial stability, and Community Reinvestment Act performance. A weak CRA rating can stop a bank deal cold. The Fed publishes orders approving or denying applications, and FIG bankers track the orders to gauge what gets through. For the largest banks, the Fed also runs the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) and the Dodd-Frank Act Stress Tests (DFAST). Banks above $100 billion in assets are examined annually under a severely adverse scenario and the Fed can object to capital distribution plans.

Insurance regulation is state based. The NAIC coordinates standards through model laws, but each state insurance commissioner has independent authority over insurers domiciled in that state. A change of control triggers a Form A filing in the state of domicile and in every state where the insurer holds a material market position. The NAIC RBC framework sets minimum capital tailored for insurance risks (asset risk, underwriting risk, business risk). For broker dealers, FINRA Rule 1017 governs change of control of 25 percent or more, with a review period of two to six months.

The Basel III capital framework is the global backbone. Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) is the headline ratio, currently 7 percent including the 2.5 percent capital conservation buffer, with additional G-SIB buffers ranging from 1 percent to 3.5 percent. The Basel III Endgame re-proposal published by the Federal Reserve in July 2025 revised the original 2023 proposal and remains under final calibration in 2026, with regulators signaling a roughly capital neutral outcome for the largest banks. FIG bankers pitching bank acquisitions have to model pro forma CET1, total capital, Tier 1, and the supplementary capital ratio on the combined entity. They also model unrealized losses in AFS and HTM securities portfolios, a lesson burned in by the March 2023 failure of Silicon Valley Bank.

How Banks Are Valued: P/TBV, DDM, and ROE Driven Frameworks

If you only learn one FIG valuation metric, learn price to tangible book value. For commercial banks and thrifts, P/TBV is the most watched number in every analyst report, pitch book, and board presentation. It strips out goodwill and other intangibles (often from prior acquisitions) and focuses on the actual capital base supporting the business. Historical context: from the mid 1990s through 2007, mid cap U.S. banks routinely traded at 2.5 to 3.5 times tangible book. After the 2008 crisis the sector reset. As of 2024 through 2026, healthy mid cap banks trade in a 1.0x to 2.0x P/TBV range, with the best performing franchises pushing toward 2.5x. M&A premiums typically add 20 to 35 percent on top of the standalone trading multiple.

The second framework is the dividend discount model (DDM). Because regulatory capital is the binding constraint and a bank can only distribute earnings in excess of what is needed to support asset growth, the DDM is a clean intrinsic value approach. The terminal year sets a sustainable return on equity (ROE) and dividend payout ratio, the cost of equity comes from a CAPM build, and the model discounts dividends through the cycle. KBW analysts publish bank DDM valuations alongside P/TBV in nearly every research note.

The third framework is the ROE to P/TBV regression. There is a tight relationship between sustainable ROE and the P/TBV multiple the market awards. The intuition: tangible book is the capital base, ROE measures how productively that capital earns, and the market rewards productive capital with a higher multiple of book. A bank earning 15 percent ROE will trade higher than one earning 8 percent. The slope and intercept of the regression shift with the rate environment, but the relationship holds. The fourth framework, price to pre provision net revenue (PPNR), strips out the credit cycle by valuing the bank on earnings before the provision for loan losses. PPNR is the cycle neutral comp.

Worked example: a community bank with $1.5 billion in assets, $150 million in tangible common equity, $20 million in normalized net income, and a sustainable ROE of 13 percent. Standalone, the bank might trade at 1.4x P/TBV, implying a $210 million market value. In an M&A process, a strategic buyer pays a 30 percent premium for cost synergies (closing branches, consolidating back office, eliminating duplicate technology) and pays roughly 1.8x P/TBV, or $270 million. The accretion and dilution analysis on the buyer side then walks the goodwill, core deposit intangible amortization, and pro forma CET1 ratio. Every FIG pitch book on a community bank deal contains this same framework, scaled up or down.

How Insurance Companies Are Valued: Embedded Value, Combined Ratio, Reserve Modeling

Insurance valuation splits along three product lines: property and casualty, life and annuity, and reinsurance. The three look different on the balance sheet, in the regulator’s eyes, and in a buyer’s model.

Property and casualty companies are valued on forward P/E (typically 10x to 15x), price to book (1.0x to 2.0x), and the operational combined ratio. Combined ratio splits into loss ratio (incurred losses plus loss adjustment expense divided by earned premium) and expense ratio (underwriting expenses divided by written premium). A 95 percent combined ratio means the company earns 5 cents of underwriting profit per dollar of premium, before investment income on the float. Public P&C names like Travelers, Chubb, Allstate, Progressive, Hartford, and W.R. Berkley publish quarterly combined ratios that analysts dissect line by line.

Life insurance and annuity valuation runs on embedded value (EV), which sums adjusted net asset value plus the present value of future profits from the in force book. EV addresses a structural problem with GAAP accounting: life insurance profits emerge over decades, so a snapshot earnings number undervalues a profitable life book. EV requires actuarial inputs (mortality, lapse, expense, interest rate assumptions) and is sensitive to discount rate. Public life insurers (MetLife, Prudential, Lincoln, Athene, Equitable, Brighthouse, Globe Life) often trade at discounts to disclosed EV, which is one reason private equity has been so active in the segment. The pension risk transfer (PRT) sub market, where corporate pension plans offload obligations to insurers, saw roughly $50 billion of U.S. volume in 2024 and remains a growth area.

Reinsurance is the wholesale layer that absorbs risk primary carriers cede away. The major public reinsurers (Munich Re, Swiss Re, Hannover Re, SCOR, Everest, RenaissanceRe, Arch Capital, AXIS, RGA) cluster in Bermuda, Switzerland, Germany, and London. Reinsurance valuation borrows from both P&C (combined ratio for property catastrophe) and life (embedded value for life reinsurance). The U.S. M&A market in reinsurance has been quieter than primary insurance, but the segment has seen meaningful capital raises and sidecar formations after major catastrophe years.

Insurance brokerage and MGA roll up activity has been the loudest insurance M&A story for the last decade. Hub International, Acrisure, Alera Group, BroadStreet Partners, AssuredPartners, and Inszone have consumed thousands of independent agencies, typically paying 8 to 12 times EBITDA. Aon’s $13.4 billion acquisition of NFP, announced December 20 2023 and closed April 2024, is the largest recent broker deal. Gallagher’s $13.5 billion acquisition of AssuredPartners closed in 2025. These deals reset the multiple range for the next wave of agency sellers.

How Asset Managers and Fintechs Are Valued: AUM Multiples, Rule of 40, EV/Revenue

Asset and wealth management valuation orbits two anchors: percent of AUM and EBITDA multiple. For traditional asset managers running long only public equity and fixed income strategies with fee rates of 25 to 60 basis points, percent of AUM lands in a 1 to 3 percent range. Alternatives managers (private equity, private credit, infrastructure, real estate) command higher multiples because their fee structures stack management fees on committed capital and carry on realized gains. BlackRock’s January 12 2024 8-K announcing the $12.5 billion acquisition of Global Infrastructure Partners valued GIP at roughly 12.5 percent of its $100 billion in AUM, a meaningfully higher percent than traditional manager precedents because of the infrastructure fee structure.

RIA aggregator valuations have settled into an 8 to 14 times trailing EBITDA range. Focus Financial Partners, taken private by Clayton Dubilier and Rice and Stone Point Capital in 2023 for roughly $7 billion, established a public market reference point that aggregators like Mercer Advisors, Hightower, Mariner Wealth Advisors, Beacon Pointe, Wealth Enhancement Group, and Allworth Financial all benchmark against. For a $5 million EBITDA RIA, a sale to an aggregator in the 10x to 12x range plus rollover equity is the baseline outcome. The premium tier (high net worth or ultra high net worth platforms with strong organic growth) can clear 14x.

Fintech and payments valuation splits by maturity. Mature payment processors trade at 15 to 25 times EBITDA, comparable to vertical software. Growth stage fintechs trade on revenue multiples (3x to 15x ARR for SaaS, 1x to 5x for transaction businesses). The Rule of 40 (revenue growth percent plus EBITDA margin percent should sum to at least 40) is a common screen. Consumer credit fintechs (Affirm, SoFi, Upstart) trade more like specialty finance once profitability stabilizes. Embedded finance and infrastructure providers (Marqeta, Adyen, Toast) get the highest multiples when net revenue growth holds above 30 percent. FT Partners publishes a quarterly fintech valuation update that aggregates these benchmarks.

Five Landmark FIG Deals That Shaped 2023 to 2026

The FIG deal calendar over the last three years has been dominated by forced bank rescues, megamergers in payments and consumer credit, and large insurance brokerage consolidation. Five deals explain most of the trajectory.

Capital One agreed to acquire Discover Financial Services in a $35.3 billion all-stock transaction announced via 8-K on February 19 2024, creating the largest credit card issuer by loan volume in the United States and bringing the Discover and PULSE payment networks under Capital One ownership. The deal closed in May 2025 after Federal Reserve and OCC approval. Centerview Partners and Wachtell Lipton advised Discover; Capital One was advised internally with legal advice from Skadden and Cravath. The strategic logic centered on Capital One owning a payment network rather than renting one from Visa or Mastercard.

UBS acquired Credit Suisse for $3.25 billion in stock in a Swiss government orchestrated rescue completed over the weekend of March 19 2023. FINMA published the regulator side announcement on March 19 2023, and UBS issued its own press release the same day. Credit Suisse had a tangible book value of roughly $45 billion at the time, making the implied P/TBV under 0.1x. The Swiss National Bank provided up to CHF 100 billion in liquidity support and FINMA wiped out $17 billion of Credit Suisse AT1 capital notes, a controversial decision that produced ongoing litigation.

JPMorgan acquired First Republic Bank on May 1 2023 after the FDIC ran a weekend auction. The FDIC press release dated May 1 2023 announced the resolution. JPMorgan paid $10.6 billion to the FDIC, assumed $173 billion of loans and $30 billion of securities, and entered a loss sharing agreement on residential and commercial real estate. JPMorgan filed the corresponding 8-K within 24 hours. The deal added roughly $50 billion to JPMorgan’s deposit base and was completed within 48 hours of the failure.

BlackRock acquired Global Infrastructure Partners for $12.5 billion, announced via 8-K on January 12 2024. BlackRock paid $3 billion in cash and roughly 12 million shares for GIP, the largest independent infrastructure investor with $100 billion of AUM. The deal made BlackRock the second largest private infrastructure manager behind Macquarie and was the headline alternatives M&A transaction of the year. Perella Weinberg Partners advised GIP.

Aon acquired NFP for $13.4 billion in a transaction announced December 20 2023 and closed April 2024. The consideration was $7 billion cash and $6.4 billion Aon stock, paid to PSP Investments and NFP management. Aon expanded its middle market footprint in P&C, benefits, and wealth management. Citi and Morgan Stanley advised NFP; Bank of America advised Aon. The deal benchmarked the next tier of middle market broker valuations.

The Top FIG Investment Banks: Bulge Bracket and Boutique League Tables

The FIG landscape has a stable cast of bulge bracket leaders, independents that have built durable franchises, and pure play boutiques that specialize by sub segment. Picking the right advisor depends on sub segment, deal size, and the seller’s strategic objectives.

The pure play FIG boutiques (KBW, FT Partners, Berkshire Global, Hovde, Brean) cover a single sub segment with depth no bulge bracket can match. For an owner of a community bank, an RIA, a fintech company, or an insurance brokerage in the $50 million to $500 million enterprise value range, the pure play boutique is often the right choice. They have run more processes in the niche than any generalist, know every likely buyer by name, and bring institutional relationships built across decades of mandates. Sandler O’Neill, focused on depositories, was acquired by Piper Jaffray (now Piper Sandler) in 2020 for roughly $485 million, consolidating the depository boutique league. For broader context on selecting the right firm, see our explainer on boutique investment banks.

FIG-Focused Private Equity: JC Flowers, Stone Point, Aquiline, Warburg Pincus

The FIG buyer universe includes a distinct group of financial services dedicated private equity firms. These sponsors raise dedicated FIG funds, employ teams of bank and insurance specialists, and execute differently from generalist buyout shops because they understand regulatory capital and reserve accounting.

JC Flowers and Co, founded by former Goldman Sachs FIG partner J. Christopher Flowers, has been the longest tenured FIG dedicated sponsor. The firm has invested in banks, insurance companies, and specialty finance platforms across the United States, Europe, and Japan. Stone Point Capital runs dedicated FIG funds and has been an active acquirer of insurance brokers, RIAs, and specialty finance lenders. Aquiline Capital Partners focuses on financial services and fintech, with portfolio companies across insurance services, asset management, payments, and B2B fintech. Warburg Pincus, Centerbridge, Reverence Capital, Lightyear Capital, Lovell Minnick, and Corsair Capital all run FIG focused or FIG heavy strategies.

The alternatives manager owned insurance platform has reshaped life insurance ownership over the last decade. Apollo runs Athene, Blackstone runs Corebridge as a partner alongside Corebridge’s IPO, KKR owns Global Atlantic, and Brookfield owns American Equity Investment Life. The thesis is consistent: alternatives managers believe they can earn better yields on insurance float through private credit and structured assets than traditional public bond portfolios, which compresses the cost of acquired liabilities and creates a structural advantage versus mutual or stock life insurers running traditional general accounts.

Selling a Financial Institution: When to Hire a FIG Specialist vs. a Generalist M&A Advisor

Most sell side advisory comparisons for founders boil down to FIG specialist versus generalist M&A boutique. The right answer depends on three variables: the regulatory complexity of the target, the depth of the relevant buyer universe, and the technical sophistication of the diligence work.

Hire a FIG specialist if your business is a chartered depository, a regulated insurance carrier, a broker dealer of meaningful scale, a specialty finance lender with material balance sheet, or a fintech with multi state money transmitter licenses. The reasons are mechanical. A FIG specialist has run dozens of bank holding company change of control filings, knows the Federal Reserve regional staff handling the application, and can model the pro forma CET1 ratio on the combined entity from the first pitch. A generalist M&A boutique without recent FIG experience will run the diligence with an industrial template, miss the regulatory clock, and likely leave 10 to 20 percent of value on the table because the buyer universe was not exhaustively canvassed.

Hire a generalist boutique with credible FIG capability if your business is a financial services adjacency that does not carry a regulatory burden: insurance services and software, third party administration, claims management, financial services BPO, fintech SaaS without money transmitter exposure, asset management technology, RIA technology platforms, or wealth platforms operating as software vendors rather than registered investment advisers. In these cases the technical FIG toolkit is not the binding constraint. What matters more is process discipline, buyer access in the relevant strategic and sponsor universe, and negotiation execution. A generalist boutique with one or two FIG senior bankers can run an excellent process.

The deal size also matters. The bulge bracket FIG groups (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, BofA, Citi) typically focus on $500 million plus transactions; below that, the fee math does not work for them and the relationship attention is thinner. For $50 million to $250 million enterprise value sales, a pure play FIG boutique or a middle market boutique with FIG credentials is the right call. For $20 million to $80 million enterprise value sales of insurance brokerages, RIAs, and specialty finance adjacencies, a generalist middle market boutique with sector experience often delivers the best client attention and the cleanest process. For more on this decision, see our guides on how to choose an investment bank for selling a business and how to choose an M&A advisory firm.

The 2026 FIG M&A Outlook: Basel III Endgame, Rate Pivot, AI-Driven Specialty Finance Consolidation

Three forces shape the 2026 FIG M&A outlook. The first is the Basel III Endgame re-proposal published by the Federal Reserve in July 2025. The original 2023 proposal would have raised aggregate capital requirements for the largest banks by roughly 20 percent. The 2025 re-proposal signaled a capital neutral approach, removing a primary headwind to bank M&A. With the regulatory capital calibration coming back into focus, bank boards have been more willing to pursue combinations that previously stalled on pro forma capital concerns.

The second force is the rate environment. The Federal Reserve cut the policy rate four times in 2024 and twice more in 2025, bringing the upper bound to a neutral range. Falling short rates expand net interest margins for asset sensitive banks once the deposit beta repricing catches up, and they unfreeze the bond portfolio mark to market losses that handcuffed bank balance sheets through 2023 and 2024. A more constructive rate backdrop has reopened the deal funnel for super regional combinations and lifted bank trading multiples back toward 1.6x to 1.8x P/TBV for healthy mid cap names.

The third force is AI driven consolidation in specialty finance and fintech. Underwriting, credit decisioning, and fraud detection all benefit from larger data sets, and the cost advantage of running AI through a national book is meaningful. Specialty finance lenders below scale (sub $1 billion in receivables) face pressure to either invest heavily in proprietary AI capability or sell to a platform that already has it. The result has been an accelerating consolidation pattern in consumer credit, equipment finance, factoring, and small business lending, with FIG boutiques running roughly 200 specialty finance sell side mandates per year in 2025 and 2026.

The crosscurrent worth tracking is the regional bank tier. The 2023 regional banking stress (Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, First Republic, Silvergate) reset deposit franchise expectations. Boards now value granular insured deposits more highly and discount concentrated uninsured deposit bases more heavily. That repricing has narrowed the buyer pool for some regional banks even as it has supported valuations for community institutions with sticky core deposits. The community bank sub sector continues to consolidate at roughly 200 deals per year, a pace that has held steady through every rate and political environment for the last decade.

FIG Investment Banking Careers: Recruiting, Hours, Pay, Exit Opportunities

FIG is a relationship intensive coverage group and breaking in is competitive. For bulge bracket FIG teams, the path looks the same as any other coverage group: summer analyst programs out of target undergraduate schools feed full time analyst classes, and associates come from MBA programs or by lateraling from other banks. The internal staffing model treats FIG as a coverage group like TMT or healthcare, with analysts staffed against industry deal flow.

For pure play FIG boutiques, the path can be different. KBW, FT Partners, and Piper Sandler (which absorbed Sandler O’Neill in 2020) have hired heavily from bank corporate development teams, FIG advisory practices at the Big Four accounting firms, and bank treasury departments. Analysts at KBW often start out of undergrad and spend entire careers inside the firm, building a depository M&A franchise rather than rotating through coverage groups. FT Partners hires heavily from payments operating roles and fintech corporate development teams in addition to traditional banking pipelines.

Compensation in FIG tracks the broader investment banking market. First year analyst base salaries at bulge brackets settled around $110,000 to $120,000 in 2025, with bonuses pushing total cash to $170,000 to $210,000 for top performers. Associate first year total compensation reaches $300,000 to $450,000. VP and director compensation scales with deal flow attribution. MD compensation at a productive FIG MD can clear $2 million to $5 million in strong years, with pure play boutique MDs at KBW or FT Partners often earning at the high end of that range during deal heavy stretches.

Hours in FIG match the rest of banking: 70 to 90 hour weeks for analysts during active deals, with the regulatory layer adding a meaningful documentation burden. Exit opportunities from FIG skew toward financial sponsors with FIG mandates (Stone Point, Aquiline, JC Flowers, Centerbridge, Reverence Capital, Lightyear), corporate development at banks and insurers, and FIG specialist hedge funds. The exit menu is narrower than TMT or healthcare because the technical training is harder to translate to generalist private equity, but the targeted opportunities are substantial and FIG bankers who go to FIG sponsors tend to advance quickly because of the technical match.

FAQ: Questions Founders and Junior Bankers Ask About FIG

What does FIG stand for in investment banking?

FIG stands for Financial Institutions Group. It is the industry coverage practice within an investment bank that advises banks, insurance companies, asset managers, broker dealers, payments processors, fintech platforms, REITs, and specialty finance firms on M&A, capital raises, and strategic advisory. Every bulge bracket has a FIG group, and several specialty boutiques (KBW, FT Partners, Hovde Group, Brean Capital) cover only FIG.

What does a FIG investment banker do?

A FIG banker covers a defined slice of the financial services universe (banks, insurance, asset management, specialty finance, fintech, market infrastructure), maintains relationships with CEOs, CFOs, and board members, builds pitch material on strategic options, runs M&A and capital raise transactions, and partners with product groups (M&A, ECM, DCM, debt finance) to execute. Day to day work includes financial modeling using FIG specific frameworks (P/TBV, embedded value, AUM multiples), reading regulatory filings and call reports, building pro forma capital and accretion or dilution analyses, and coordinating regulatory work product with counsel.

Is FIG a good group in investment banking?

FIG is a strong coverage group for analysts who want deep technical specialization, durable client relationships, and a stable deal pipeline driven by ongoing industry consolidation. The technical training is harder to translate to generalist private equity exits than TMT, but the FIG specific exits (FIG focused sponsors, bank corporate development, FIG hedge funds) are substantial. Bankers who plan to stay in financial services long term often find FIG the highest impact group to build a career.

What are the top FIG investment banks?

Among bulge brackets, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citi all run top tier FIG groups. For pure play FIG advisory, KBW (owned by Stifel) leads bank M&A, FT Partners dominates fintech and payments, Berkshire Global Advisors and Park Sutton are strong in asset management, Hovde Group specializes in sub $1 billion bank deals, and Houlihan Lokey runs a broad FIG middle market practice. Piper Sandler (post the 2020 Sandler O’Neill merger) leads middle market bank M&A by deal count. Lazard and Evercore are strong on the largest international FIG transactions. Brean Capital and Raymond James round out the active middle market roster.

How are banks valued in FIG?

Banks are valued primarily on price to tangible book value (P/TBV), typically 1.0x to 2.5x in 2026 for healthy mid cap names, because regulatory capital is the binding constraint on growth. Secondary frameworks include forward P/E (8x to 15x), dividend discount model (DDM), ROE to P/TBV regression, and price to pre provision net revenue (PPNR) for cycle neutral comparisons. M&A premiums typically add 20 to 35 percent on top of the standalone trading multiple. Standard EBITDA and DCF math does not translate cleanly to depository institutions, which is the technical reason FIG exists as a discrete coverage group.

What is the difference between FIG and M&A?

FIG is a coverage group inside an investment bank; M&A is a product group. FIG bankers own the client relationship with financial institutions and bring in M&A advisory mandates. M&A bankers (the product specialists) execute the transaction mechanics: structuring, valuation, process management, negotiation, and documentation. On a typical sell side FIG mandate, the FIG coverage team partners with the M&A product team. The FIG team brings the relationship and the sector knowledge; the M&A team brings the process and the deal execution muscle. For an inside look at how this partnership runs in practice, see our guide on the investment banking process for selling a company.

What are exit opportunities from FIG?

FIG exits skew toward FIG focused private equity (Stone Point, Aquiline, JC Flowers, Centerbridge, Reverence Capital, Lightyear, Lovell Minnick), corporate development roles at banks and insurers, and FIG specialist hedge funds. The exit menu is narrower than TMT or healthcare because the technical training is harder to translate to generalist private equity, but the FIG specific exits are substantial. Less commonly, FIG bankers move to direct lending platforms, insurance investment teams, or operating roles inside payments and fintech companies.

How much do FIG investment bankers make?

First year analyst base salaries at bulge brackets are around $110,000 to $120,000 in 2025, with bonuses pushing total cash to $170,000 to $210,000 for top performers. Associate first year total comp reaches $300,000 to $450,000. VP and director comp scales with deal flow attribution. Productive FIG MDs at bulge brackets or pure play boutiques (KBW, FT Partners) often clear $2 million to $5 million in strong years. Compensation tracks the broader investment banking market with no meaningful FIG discount or premium.

Which firms specialize in FIG advisory?

Pure play FIG specialists include KBW (banks and insurance), FT Partners (fintech and payments), Berkshire Global Advisors (asset management), Park Sutton (asset management), Hovde Group (community banks), Brean Capital (community banks and insurance), and Sandler O’Neill (now Piper Sandler, depositories). Houlihan Lokey, Stephens, and Raymond James have substantial FIG middle market practices. Lazard and Evercore run independent FIG groups focused on the largest cross border transactions. Generalist boutiques with credible FIG capability include Centerview, PJT Partners, Moelis, and Guggenheim.

What is the largest FIG M&A deal ever?

The largest U.S. bank merger in history was BB&T’s acquisition of SunTrust to form Truist in 2019, valued at $66 billion. The largest recent FIG deal is Capital One’s $35.3 billion acquisition of Discover, announced February 19 2024 and closed in May 2025. Other landmark FIG transactions include Chubb’s $29.5 billion acquisition of ACE in 2015, Charles Schwab’s $26 billion acquisition of TD Ameritrade in 2019, JPMorgan’s $58 billion acquisition of Bank One in 2004, and Bank of America’s $50 billion acquisition of Merrill Lynch in 2008.

Is FIG harder than other coverage groups?

FIG is technically harder than most coverage groups because of the unique accounting (loss reserves, deferred acquisition costs, embedded value, regulatory capital, CECL), the unique valuation frameworks (P/TBV, embedded value, AUM multiples, combined ratio), and the regulatory overlay. Modeling a bank merger requires comfort with goodwill, core deposit intangibles, accretion or dilution math, and pro forma capital ratios. Modeling a life insurance deal requires comfort with embedded value, actuarial assumptions, and statutory capital. New FIG analysts typically take longer to ramp than peers in TMT or industrials, but the technical training compounds into durable expertise.

What is the difference between P/TBV and P/E for banks?

Price to tangible book (P/TBV) measures market price per dollar of regulatory capital after stripping out goodwill and intangibles. Forward P/E measures market price per dollar of next year earnings. For banks, P/TBV is the dominant multiple because regulatory capital is the binding constraint on growth and tangible book is the cleanest measure of that capital. P/E matters as a secondary check, particularly for through the cycle comparisons. A bank earning a 15 percent return on tangible common equity will typically trade at a higher P/TBV than one earning 8 percent, because the higher ROE bank compounds capital faster. The ROE to P/TBV regression captures this relationship and serves as the cleanest one chart summary of bank trading multiples.

Talk to CT Acquisitions About a FIG-Adjacent Sell-Side Process

CT Acquisitions advises owners of specialty finance, fintech, insurance services, asset management adjacencies, and other financial services businesses on sell side transactions. We do not compete head on with KBW for community bank mandates or with FT Partners for venture backed fintech rounds. The mandates we run are middle market: independent insurance brokerages and MGAs in the $5 million to $40 million EBITDA range, RIAs with $250 million to $5 billion in AUM, specialty finance lenders below the bulge bracket size threshold, fintech and payments software businesses with $5 million to $50 million of ARR, third party administrators, claims management firms, and financial services BPO. The process starts with a financial and operational diagnostic, builds a normalized adjusted EBITDA, applies the right valuation framework for the sub segment, develops a targeted buyer list of strategics and sponsors, and runs a structured auction or negotiated sale. Reach the team through our scheduling page, or read more about how investment bankers value a business and how investment bankers run a sell side auction.