Goldman Sachs Tops Vault Banking 25 Prestige Ranking for 19th Year

The Vault Banking 25 survey conducted in spring 2026 gathered input from roughly 2,100 banking professionals—down from 2,800 last year—who evaluated their firms on a 10-point scale across 20 work-life and diversity dimensions and separately rated prestige to capture street-level industry perceptions.

Goldman Sachs secured the highest average prestige rating, preserving its unbroken streak at #1 since the metric’s inception in 2007, driven by exceptional scores in culture, leadership quality and client interaction among banking respondents.

Vault’s methodology assigns 40% weight to prestige, 20% to firm culture, 10% each to compensation and business outlook, 10% to overall satisfaction, and 5% each to work-life balance and training, highlighting reputation and employee experience as key factors that could bolster Goldman’s recruiting and retention strategy.