The Advisors' Blog

Yesterday, I shared some general statistics and trends from WTW’s recent report on perks practices at S&P 500 companies in 2023. The report also addresses the prevalence of various types of executive perks in this group.

Personal use of corporate aircraft is the most prevalent executive perk, with 46% of companies providing this benefit to CEOs in 2023 and 31% offering it to other NEOs (see Figure 2). Companies prioritize this benefit for security and efficiency purposes; however, it comes at a cost. Corporate aircraft use was the most expensive type of perk, with the median value for CEOs at approximately $132,000.

Nearly one-quarter (24%) of CEOs receive home and/or personal security services. This suite of security services also can extend to identity theft or cybersecurity protection. Of the companies that offer their CEOs security benefits, 9% (or 2% of the total data sample) include these digital protection services. The median value of security services for CEOs in 2023 approached $50,000.

In terms of governance over perks practices, the alert noted that these statistics don’t mean that companies are “necessarily writing a blank check for personal/private air travel.”

One-third (33%) of companies that provide personal use of corporate aircraft disclose the use of an annual limit on such travel, expressed as either a fixed-dollar amount or a total number of hours. The median annual limit, disclosed as a fixed-dollar amount for CEOs, was $190,000; for annual time-based limits, the median was 75 hours.

As I noted yesterday, this group’s median spend for executive perks for all NEOs was (to me) surprisingly low. If your total perks are far off this norm, that might be an indication that limits and other governance policies are in order to the extent you don’t have them already.

– Meredith Ervine