The Advisors' Blog

– Broc Romanek, CompensationStandards.com

Here’s the intro from this Equilar blog:

Since the passing of Dodd-Frank in 2010, executive compensation has become increasingly scrutinized in light of increased transparency and enhanced disclosure. Nowadays, shareholders expect corporations to have well-rounded and fair compensation programs, and to achieve this, companies often use compensation consulting services and compensation surveys to supplement data reported in public filings. A majority of public companies engage compensation consulting firms to advise on their compensation programs, and many others use survey data for benchmarking executive pay—often hand-in-hand with consultant advisory services.

In 2015, 38.5% of Russell 3000 (R3K) companies that retained a compensation consultant for advisory services also used at least one compensation survey, down from 46.6% in 2011, according to disclosure in annual proxy statements. For those that did not utilize consultancy services, only 24.7% used survey data in 2015, down 3.8 percentage points from 2011. Companies that retain consultants for compensation advice are more likely to also use compensation surveys, though the tie between consultant engagement and survey usage is weakening over time.