Methodology

Compensation Advisory Partners (“CAP”) reviewed the annual incentive plan designs of approximately 100 large companies representing a cross-section of industries. The companies included in this study have median revenues of $33 billion, a median market cap of $52 billion and a median 6-year total shareholder return of 9%, through year end 2013.

CAP analyzed the annual incentive plan payouts of the companies in the sample over the past 6 years to determine the distribution of incentive payments and the frequency with which executives typically achieve target payouts. In this analysis, CAP categorized actual bonus payments (as a percent of target) into one of six categories based on payout ranges as depicted in the following chart:

HIGHLIGHTS

• Companies rarely make wholesale changes to plans, but frequently revisit the performance metrics used
• Most companies use multiple measures to ensure the plan provides balance and aligns with overall business strategy
• Overall, 2013 annual incentive payouts were higher than in 2012 indicating stronger performance

CHANGES IN ANNUAL INCENTIVE PLAN DESIGN

Overall, 34% of companies in CAP’s study changed their annual incentive plan design in 2013 or 2014. The most common changes were to the performance metrics used to fund awards (47% of the companies making a change) or to the weightings applicable to performance metrics (32%). Another frequent change was to increase the target award opportunities offered to Named Executive Officers; reductions in target awards were made much less frequently. These changes, as well as other modifications shown in the chart on the right, illustrate that companies continue to review and enhance the pay-for-performance relationship through changes to the annual incentive program.

Note: Due to multiple changes, does not add up to 100%.

Change in Performance Metrics

Among the companies that changed the annual incentive performance metrics, about one-half of companies modified plan metrics while maintaining the current number of metrics to better align pay with performance:

• Ten (10) companies kept the same number of metrics but replaced a metric in the incentive plan
• Four (4) companies reduced the number of metrics, and
• Two (2) companies added metrics to the current plan.

Several companies indicated that their rationale for changing annual incentive metrics was, in large part, to have a more holistic view of overall company performance and to better align incentives with their business strategy:

• AFLAC Inc: Added Operating Return On Equity (OROE) as a performance metric for senior vice presidents and above; this metric allows shareholders to evaluate AFLAC’s financial achievements relative to other organizations in terms of how effectively capital is used to generate earnings
• Danaher Corp: Added Return On Investment Capital (ROIC) in order to help validate the efficiency of earnings and complement the cash flow metric
• United Technologies Corp: Changed the earnings metric from EPS to Net Income since Net Income is not impacted by share repurchases
• Bristol-Myers Squibb: Replaced Adjusted Net Cash Flow from Operations with a metric for pipeline performance that consists of regulatory submissions and approvals and is a better indication of long-term growth potential.

Change in Target Bonus Opportunity

In 2013, median target bonus opportunities for CEOs increased (by 9 percentage points), while the opportunities for CFOs decreased (by 3 percentage points). Most notably, target bonus opportunity for CEOs in the Automotive, Insurance, and Retail industries increased by 10 percentage points year over year. However, the Technology industry experienced a significant decrease (21 percentage points) due to an increase in the base salary for Cisco’s CEO (from $375,000 to $1,100,000) and a decrease in the target opportunity for the new CEO at Intel (from 462.7% of base salary to 239.2%).

Median target bonus opportunity for CFOs in the Automotive industry experienced a decrease of 5 percentage points in 2013 largely due to the promotion of a new CFO at Goodyear (target opportunity decreased from 91% to 63% of base salary). Conversely, target bonus opportunity for CFOs in the Insurance industry increased (8 percentage points) in 2013; all other industries saw little movement to the target bonus opportunity.

Note: Financial Services industry is excluded since most companies in our study do not disclose target bonus opportunities for the Named Executive Officers.

ANNUAL INCENTIVE PLAN DESIGN / PRACTICES

Award Leverage

Disclosure of the payout range (i.e., both threshold and maximum payout as a percentage of target) is a limited practice as most companies reviewed did not disclose a threshold level of performance required to receive a bonus payment. For the 37 companies that disclose a threshold bonus, 50% of target is the most common payout percentage. However, 20 companies disclose a minimum bonus payout of less than 50% of target; a majority of these companies provide a payout based on multiple plan metrics.

Approximately 75% of companies disclose the maximum bonus opportunity. A majority (60%) have a maximum bonus opportunity of 200% of target bonus. Ten (10) companies have a maximum bonus of 250% of target or higher. A majority of these companies are in the Consumer Goods, Pharmaceutical, and Technology industries.

Annual Incentive Plan Metrics

EPS, Revenue, Cash Flow and Operating Income are the most prevalent metrics used in annual incentive plans. Although EPS is the most common metric overall, it is the most common metric for only two industries (Financial Services and Healthcare). Revenue, the second most common metric, is the most prevalent in four industries (Consumer Goods, Pharmaceutical, Retail and Technology). Our findings suggest that EPS is used more broadly across industries while Revenue tends to be used in consumer-driven industries.

Most companies (approximately 70%) use more than one performance metric in the annual incentive plan. 25% of companies disclose using two (2) metrics in their annual incentive programs, 25% use three (3) metrics, and 21% of companies use four (4) or more metrics. Approximately 62% of these companies use a profit-based metric in combination with Revenue and/or Cash Flow.

The chart below shows the three (3) most metrics by industry in 2013:

Note: Percentages reflect the prevalence of companies disclosing the metric.

2013 Actual Bonus Payout

Nearly all companies (98%) in our research awarded bonuses to their Named Executive Officers for 2013 performance. Overall, the median CEO bonus was 121% of target compared to 112% in 2012, indicating that 2013 performance was generally stronger than 2012. Most industries exceeded target bonus payouts by 11 – 65 percentage points. However, two industries (Retail and Technology) fell short of expectations by 22 and 12 percentage points, respectively.

Use of deferral mechanisms in the annual incentive plan is a limited practice and is more common in the Financial Services industry given regulations from the Federal Reserve. However, a few companies across industries also have a deferral policy in place. Companies typically defer annual incentive payment in the form of restricted stock/units.

Use of Discretion

Approximately 50% of companies in our research disclose the use of discretion in the annual incentive plan. Among these companies, approximately 40% allow only for downward adjustments of the final payout. Approximately 55% allow for both upward and downward adjustments by funding bonuses for Name Executive Officers at maximum based on a financial metric (this is unrelated to the final award allocation which may have additional performance requirements) to ensure compliance with Section162(m) of the Internal Revenue Code. This approach provides the Committee with the most flexibility in determining the bonus payout.

Conclusion

Given significant changes to the annual incentive plan design in recent years, companies rarely made wholesale changes to the overall plan design in 2013 or for 2014. Among the companies that made changes, most were focusing on refining the incentive metrics to ensure a more complete view of company performance and alignment with the overall business strategy. Despite these changes to the incentive metrics, EPS, Revenue, Cash Flow and Operating Income continue to be most common. While we would not expect to see extensive changes to the incentive plan design in the future, we anticipate that companies will continue to refine their metrics and the metric weightings as they continue to ensure executive pay is aligned with performance.

Partner Susan Schroeder and Principal Bonnie Schindler are interviewed on their 2014 survey private company incentive pay practices.

Underlying the Fed’s input to financial institutions is a legitimate concern about the potential for incentives to encourage excessive risk taking. The Fed has stated that: “risk-taking incentives provided by incentive compensation arrangements in the financial services industry were a contributing factor to the financial crisis that began in 2007” and “Before the crisis, large banking organizations did not pay adequate attention to risk when designing and operating their incentive compensation systems.” Agree or disagree with these points, over the past several years compensation-related risk management processes have vastly improved.

In this CAPflash, we provide an overview of how compensation practices have evolved following the Fed’s guidance, what (in our view) the Fed has got “right” and where they may have gone too far, and what we expect to see from banks and regulators in the near future.

Where We Are Now

The Final Guidance was principles-based, leaving leeway for implementation to consider differences among the institutions subject to this new level of oversight. For example, companies with significant differences in their businesses, such as select investment banks, custody banks, regional banks, and credit card companies were all subject to the same guidance. In its October 2011 publication, the Federal Reserve noted, “The interagency guidance helps to avoid the potential hazards or unintended consequences that would be associated with rigid, one-size-fits-all supervisory limits or formulas.” In our experience, banks devoted considerable time and resources to demonstrate substantial conformance with the new requirements, but went about responding and demonstrating conformance to regulators in different ways.

The Interagency Guidance was founded on three key principles:

1. Balance between risks and results. Incentive compensation arrangements should balance risk and financial results in a manner that does not encourage employees to expose their organizations to imprudent risks;
2. Processes and controls that reinforce balance. A banking organization’s risk-management processes and internal controls should reinforce and support the development and maintenance of balanced incentive compensation arrangements; and
3. Effective corporate governance. Banking organizations should have strong and effective corporate governance to help ensure sound incentive compensation practices, including active and effective oversight by the board of directors.

Improved Risk Management

In our experience, companies have come a long way in addressing all three key principles. Most banks have greatly strengthened their risk management processes and ensured that the risk function has a defined role in reviewing compensation design, as well as performance outcomes and their impact on compensation payments. Where the risk function seldom had any role in the incentive compensation process in the past, they are now integrated into the process. Similarly, great strides have been made to ensure that Compensation Committees are informed about risk-taking within the organization and how incentive compensation designs across the company address risk. Many banks have also formed internal committees responsible for maintaining controls and risk oversight of incentive compensation plans across their organizations.

Prescribing Plan Design

The Fed and other agencies have become more prescriptive in their “guidance” to banks, at times almost to the point of allowing for limited leeway in compensation practices. The table below provides a summary of the methods for linking compensation and risk outcomes described in the Final Guidance, and select examples of how current compensation design practices have evolved based on input from regulators.

In our view, the area where the Federal Reserve has had the most positive impact on incentive compensation design is in requiring deferrals to be subject to performance adjustment, before and after grant, based on risk outcomes (generally not the case before the guidance). Other changes encouraged by the Fed (e.g., eliminating/reducing stock options, reducing upside incentive plan leverage to 125%-150% of target, reducing the use of relative measures, etc.) seem to be less well founded in the principles of risk balancing and more arbitrary. It is difficult to identify the role that these incentive design features played in the financial crisis and it seems to us that Fed input on these areas is based more on theoretical objections than any empirical data supporting the hypothesis that these incentive design features encouraged excessive risk-taking among executives at financial institutions.

Future Concerns and Expectations

U.S. regulators should be commended for maintaining a largely hands off approach thus far with respect to pay levels, focusing primarily on incentive compensation design and control features. This approach provides a strong focus on risk balancing of incentive compensation, while recognizing the need for the industry to maintain competitive compensation programs. In contrast, in the European Union, CRD-IV places caps on the level of incentive pay that may be delivered (as a ratio of fixed pay). This type of regulation severely limits the ability to implement a pay-for-performance compensation design and, in response, has led many companies to increase fixed pay. As a result, CRD-IV has potentially harmed shareholders by weakening the pay-for-performance relationship. Thankfully, to-date, the Fed has avoided this kind of heavy-handed approach in addressing compensation in U.S. financial institutions.

Still, we may have unanticipated consequences in the U.S. Many shareholders and shareholder advisory groups prefer formulaic performance-based incentive arrangements to discretionary incentives, as they fear that discretion will be used for the benefit of management. However, because regulators have discouraged formulaic, performance-based upside in incentive compensation plans, many financial institutions have moved to more discretionary incentive arrangements to allow for greater flexibility to compensate executives. Another potential response to the Fed’s input is that, over time, financial institutions may increase pay levels to address concerns that executive talent will depart for other industries (e.g., hedge funds, private equity, asset management) where there are no restrictions on incentive design.

Going forward, we expect regulators to provide more guidance on monitoring and validation processes and results. Many companies developed approaches to retrospectively review risk outcomes and the corresponding impact on compensation decisions, but communicating these processes and results for all covered employees to regulators is still, generally, in early stages. Regarding incentive plan upside leverage, regulators have started to state more and more directly a belief that 125% is most appropriate, but many banks have held their ground at 150%. Some of the banks that moved to 125% may start to re-evaluate their program and consider moving back to 150% to remain competitive.

As companies and Committees try to “live with” the restrictions of the guidance, we expect to see a continued move away from formal targets and increased use of discretion, increases in pay levels to recognize decreased incentive plan upside leverage, and challenges in applying risk adjustments and clawbacks.

Conclusion

Incentive compensation processes and designs among financial institutions have changed a great deal over the past four years, to a large degree driven by regulatory input. If we look back at the principles (Final Guidance), most banks have come a long way in addressing them. At this point, we hope that regulators can step back and consider how much progress has been made and consider taking a pause to begin to evaluate what changes were necessary and effective and what changes may have been excessive.

Appendix – Summary Market Data

[company-by-company data available upon request]

Methodology

CAP reviewed 2012, 2013, and 2014 proxy statements and the most recent equity award agreements of the 23 large publicly-traded banks1 that were included as part of the Federal Reserve’s horizontal review of incentive compensation. Our analysis looked for year-over-year changes in compensation structure, annual and long-term incentive design, performance-based vesting, recoupment policies and stock ownership guidelines/retention requirements.

Select summary data is shown below. Findings have been divided into two data sets, large complex banking organizations (LCBOs) and other large banks with assets exceeds $50 billion. LCBOs are one year ahead of the other large banks in terms of their interaction with the Fed, and the related implications on compensation program design.

Long-term Incentive Mix, 2012-2014

Long-term Incentive Absolute vs. Relative Performance Metrics, 2012-2014

Long-term Performance Plan Maximum Upside Leverage, 2012-2014

Stock Ownership Requirements

Some companies differentiate stock retention requirements for the CEO versus Other NEOs. Therefore in some instances the prevalence shown is greater than 100 percent.

Research assistance was provided by: Myron Lising, Roman Beleuta, Michael Biagi, Michael Bonner, Rachael Holland, and Jasmine Yanes.