ISS Corporate Solutions Announces Launch of Award Simulator

New York, NY; April 30, 2014 – ISS Corporate Solutions, Inc. (ICS), a leading provider of governance  tools and advisory services to help companies improve shareholder value and reduce risk, today announced the launch of Award Simulator, a web-based executive compensation tool providing a clear line-of-sight into the value and achievability of executives’ performance-based awards.

As performance-based pay becomes the driving factor in total compensation, the shift in pay mix has led to added complexity, resulting in poor visibility into the value and likely achievement of performance awards, along with a growing focus on the goal setting process.

An analysis of ISS Incentive Lab data finds performance-based incentive pay overtook time-based incentive pay in 2010, with the share of performance-based pay increasing in every year since then. The knock-on effect of this shift has also prompted significant changes in the design of performance awards, with frequent changes to performance measures (more than 60 percent of companies changed a performance measure in the latest fiscal year), greater use of relative measures comparing a company to a benchmark – usually peers– and many variations of payout structures.

“Companies need better data and analytics to support critical compensation design decisions,” said Jack Zwingli, Head, Compensation Business. “The Award Simulator provides needed clarity on the impact of design choices – goal setting, metric selection, payout structure – to best match award design to the intent of the board.”

Through the October 2014 acquisition of Incentive Lab, ICS is able to provide advanced data and analytics to help address the key issues brought about by the growth of performance-based pay, giving boards, human resource professionals, compensation consultants, and corporate executives powerful new tools to help design and manage performance awards.

“ICS is pleased to enhance our offerings to clients through the addition of Incentive Lab data and solutions,” said Mark Brockway, Head, ICS Business. “With the addition of Award Simulator, we are now able to offer our clients solutions for award design and modeling alongside those for benchmarking and measuring pay-for-performance.”