Banks admit they need to do more to limit bonuses but progress is being made, report shows

News - Banking

Written by Ray Clancy

Friday, 03 September 2010 08:15

Banks admit that they need to be more open about the size of their bonus pools and the methodology for paying star bankers, after making progress in other areas of reforming pay structures.

More changes to pay policies are needed to reduce the excessive risk taking that was blamed for contributing to the global financial crisis, according to a survey by the Institute of International Finance (IIF), a bank lobby group.

‘There has been a surprising amount of progress in a number of areas, but not all institutions are there yet and there is still work needed in shuffling the industry down the right path in some areas,’ said Nick Studer, a partner at consultancy Oliver Wyman in London and a co-author of the report.

‘There is a definite risk of returning to the first mover disadvantage mindset, whereby a bank thinks if they do anything to overhaul compensation practices they risk losing people,’ he added.

Rick Waugh, chief executive officer of Canada's Scotiabank and co-chairman of an IIF steering committee on pay issues, said more needed to be done by the banks, including increasing emphasis on linking incentives to performance.

‘Importantly, we do not see this as restricting the level of compensation, but that banks adopt policies to ensure that incentives do not induce risk-taking in excess of the firm's risk appetite,’ Waugh explained.

The report, conducted with Oliver Wyman and based on a survey and interviews with banks accounting for 70% of wholesale banking revenues, showed most banks were implementing compensation systems in line with guidelines set out by the Financial Stability Board a year ago. Neither the survey nor the report addressed the level of compensation.

But industry critics have said not enough has changed and banks are reverting to offering massive payouts. Bonus structures were blamed for fuelling a boom in complex structured products linked to risky US sub-prime home loans.

Credit Suisse this week said its top UK bankers will receive a special September bonus. The Swiss bank has led rivals with some pay reforms, but said it needs to remain competitive after cutting bonuses last year.

A controversial one off supertax on bonuses in Britain last year had failed to change behaviour as bankers had found ‘imaginative ways’ of avoiding it, the former UK finance minister Alistair Darling who introduced it said this week.

The IIF report said politicians need to acknowledge that some reforms, such as basing bonuses on profits adjusted for risk or capital usage, would take several years. That needs consistent regulation to help the process, it said.

The IIF said boards and remuneration committees are now more involved in setting the bonus pool and designing pay plans. The structure of payouts has been significantly reformed since the start of the crisis, with more deferred or paid in shares, the survey showed.

It said deferred compensation was now 39% of the compensation pool, 85% of surveyed banks are deferring pay for three years or more, and nearly 70% of deferred compensation is paid in shares.

Firms have also cut rewards for failure, the IIF said, with unconditional payouts halved and multi-year guaranteed bonuses almost eliminated. It said 15% of firms still had ‘golden parachutes’, but most were attempting to eliminate them.