In No. 163 (posted May 23, 2016), I showed a tabulation of 2015 executive compensation in the insurance industry from filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). That was my first major tabulation of executive compensation data since I ended publication of The Insurance Forum after the December 2013 issue.
Another Tabulation
Here I present another tabulation of 2015 data, this time from filings with the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) by life companies and health companies doing business in New York. In the final seven years of the Forum, I included in the tabulations individuals who received $1 million or more each year. In No. 163 I included individuals who received $5 million or more in 2015 according to SEC data. Here I include individuals who received $3 million or more in 2015 according to DFS data.
The data are from Schedule G in the New York Supplement to the 2015 statutory financial statements filed with DFS in March 2016. DFS posts online most of the data from the New York Supplement, but does not post data from Schedule G. Therefore I obtained the data from DFS through a request pursuant to the New York Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). The new tabulation is at the bottom of this blog post.
Schedule Gs for life companies are assembled by the Life Bureau of DFS. Schedule Gs for health companies are assembled by the Health Bureau of DFS.
Schedule Gs for the two types of companies differ. For life companies, Schedule G shows for each individual only one figure representing compensation attributable to service performed for or on behalf of the reporting company. Thus the figure omits compensation from any related company not operating in New York. The first section of the tabulation below shows for each individual the one figure from Schedule G. Where more than one individual is shown for a company, they are listed in descending order of compensation.
For health companies, Schedule G shows four figures for each individual. One figure is the amount paid by the reporting company. The second figure is salary paid by the company and all other companies in the same group. The third figure is bonus and all other compensation paid by the company and all other companies in the same group. The fourth figure is the total of the second and third figures. The second section of the tabulation below shows for each individual the fourth (total) figure. To avoid listing individuals more than once, I combined the members of company groups into a single entry for each group. Where more than one individual is shown for a company or group, they are listed in descending order of compensation.
The Struggle for Access to Data in New York
In No. 163 I mentioned that over the years I encountered efforts to block access to executive compensation data. The longest and most difficult struggle began in New York in 2000 and ended in 2008.
The Department's Stunning Action in April 2000
In November 1999 I filed with the New York Department of Insurance (now DFS) my routine FOIL request for all 1999 Schedule Gs to be filed in March 2000. In April 2000, in a stunning administrative action, the Department abruptly decided to black out the names, job titles, and compensation amounts of all but the directors and three top officers of each company. Executive compensation data had long been publicly filed with the Department pursuant to a state law enacted in 1906 after the Hughes-Armstrong investigation of 1905 and later amended from time to time to increase the disclosure threshold.
The April 2000 action was based on the Department's determination that disclosing the names constituted an "unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." That is one of several FOIL exemptions from disclosure. The Department took its action at the request of New York-domiciled Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States and New Jersey-domiciled Prudential Insurance Company of America. Equitable obtained an elaborate legal opinion to support the request. However, there was no opportunity for anyone to submit a legal opinion in opposition to the request, because the Department made its decision in secret and without advance notice to the public. I knew nothing about the Equitable request, the Prudential request, the legal opinion, or the April 2000 action until after the fact, when I received the documents in response to my FOIL request for all documents relating to my November 1999 FOIL request.
In their requests that the Department take action to prevent the release of Schedule G data, Equitable and Prudential made clear that the requests were prompted by an Equitable agents' association that had posted on its website the entire Schedule Gs for 1999 of several major companies, including Equitable and Prudential. Thus the requests were not prompted by my tabulations, which by then I had been publishing for 25 years.
In July 2000, because the April 2000 action was a partial denial of my November 1999 FOIL request, I filed with the Department an appeal of the partial denial. The Department denied the appeal.
In December 2000 I filed in state court in New York a petition for judicial review of the partial denial. At my attorney's suggestion I had narrowed the request to individuals who received at least $600,000, which was my threshold at the time.
In September 2001 the court ordered the Department to honor my request. The court ruled that the Department had not made an adequate case to support its privacy claim. However, the court sidestepped the basic question: Did the Department have the right to deny public access to a portion of the annual statement, which was a public document long before the enactment of FOIL, and presumably still is a public document?
The Department changed its procedures after the court ruling. The Department began to require companies to file two versions of Schedule G. The first version showed (1) names and compensation of directors and (2) names, job titles, and compensation of all other individuals for which the threshold in the statute required disclosure of the data. The second version showed (1) names and compensation of directors and (2) names, job titles, and compensation of the three top officers and all other individuals who received compensation of $600,000 or more to comply with the court ruling and my disclosure threshold. Only the second version was provided to me and other persons who filed FOIL requests for Schedule Gs.
My Victory in 2007
In February 2007, in my routine FOIL request for 2006 data, I asked for Schedule Gs with no names blacked out. In other words, I asked for the first version mentioned in the preceding paragraph. With the request I enclosed an explanatory memorandum. By then the Department was under new management, and I felt the time had come to request a reversal of the April 2000 action.
The Department, without informing me, sent my request to the Life Insurance Council of New York (LICONY), an association of companies doing business in New York. LICONY obtained an elaborate legal opinion arguing that my request should be denied.
On June 13, 2007, in a lengthy legal memorandum, the Department informed LICONY that, effective June 25, the Department "will return to its prior and longstanding practice of producing [Schedule Gs] without redaction of names." I knew nothing about any of these developments until after the fact, when I received the documents in response to my FOIL request for all documents relating to my February 2007 FOIL request.
LICONY's Victory in 2008
LICONY was enraged by the Department's reversal of the April 2000 action. LICONY quietly arranged for bills to be introduced in both houses of the New York legislature in the spring of 2008 to decimate the then 102-year-old executive compensation disclosure law. I say "quietly" because I was unaware of the existence of the bills, on which there had been no debate, no hearings, and no publicity, until I received a tip from a "Deep Throat" informer after the proposed amendment had sailed through both houses and had been sent to Governor David Paterson for his signature. I rushed a package of material to the governor and asked him to veto the amendment, but he signed it into law.
The amendment required life insurance companies doing business in New York to disclose (1) names and compensation of directors, (2) names, job titles, and compensation of the chief executive officer and the next four highest compensated employees, (3) names, job titles, and compensation of the next five highest compensated employees, and (4) job titles and compensation, but not the names, of other employees below the top ten but whose compensation exceeded $750,000. Those requirements mean that, in large companies, there are many highly paid executives whose job titles and compensation are disclosed but whose names are blacked out. In the 2015 data, for example, there are 435 names blacked out where compensation was $1 million or more in 2015. Here are the 13 companies and the numbers of blacked out names:
How To Obtain Data from DFS
The DFS website contains a form with which to file an online FOIL request. Go to:
My May 2016 Letter to the Life Bureau
I have long been troubled by the format of Schedule G used by the Life Bureau. The problem is that the one compensation figure for each individual is for services rendered to or on behalf of the reporting company. Thus for many companies operating in New York through small subsidiaries, only a small percentage of the individual's total compensation is disclosed.
For example, as indicated in No. 163, the 2015 total compensation of Daniel Amos, AFLAC's chairman of the board, as reported in AFLAC's SEC filing, was $11,982,383. The figure for him in Schedule G of AFLAC's subsidiary, American Family Life Assurance Company of New York, was $72,055.
I have written to the Life Bureau previously on this matter, but my concern has not been addressed. On May 16, 2016, I wrote to the Life Bureau again. I inquired about the number of FOIL requests DFS received in recent years. A spokeswoman said both bureaus together received 49 FOIL requests in 2015 and have received 45 FOIL requests thus far in 2016. I have not yet received a response to the major concern expressed in my letter about the format of the Schedule G the Life Bureau uses.
Available Material
I am offering a 13-page complimentary PDF that consists of articles from the July 2000, November 2001, October 2007, October 2008, and November 2009 issues of The Insurance Forum describing the April 2000 action and its aftermath, and my May 16, 2016 letter to the Life Bureau. Email jmbelth@gmail.com and ask for the May 2016 package relating to disclosure of executive compensation data in New York.
Another Tabulation
Here I present another tabulation of 2015 data, this time from filings with the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) by life companies and health companies doing business in New York. In the final seven years of the Forum, I included in the tabulations individuals who received $1 million or more each year. In No. 163 I included individuals who received $5 million or more in 2015 according to SEC data. Here I include individuals who received $3 million or more in 2015 according to DFS data.
The data are from Schedule G in the New York Supplement to the 2015 statutory financial statements filed with DFS in March 2016. DFS posts online most of the data from the New York Supplement, but does not post data from Schedule G. Therefore I obtained the data from DFS through a request pursuant to the New York Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). The new tabulation is at the bottom of this blog post.
Schedule Gs for life companies are assembled by the Life Bureau of DFS. Schedule Gs for health companies are assembled by the Health Bureau of DFS.
Schedule Gs for the two types of companies differ. For life companies, Schedule G shows for each individual only one figure representing compensation attributable to service performed for or on behalf of the reporting company. Thus the figure omits compensation from any related company not operating in New York. The first section of the tabulation below shows for each individual the one figure from Schedule G. Where more than one individual is shown for a company, they are listed in descending order of compensation.
For health companies, Schedule G shows four figures for each individual. One figure is the amount paid by the reporting company. The second figure is salary paid by the company and all other companies in the same group. The third figure is bonus and all other compensation paid by the company and all other companies in the same group. The fourth figure is the total of the second and third figures. The second section of the tabulation below shows for each individual the fourth (total) figure. To avoid listing individuals more than once, I combined the members of company groups into a single entry for each group. Where more than one individual is shown for a company or group, they are listed in descending order of compensation.
The Struggle for Access to Data in New York
In No. 163 I mentioned that over the years I encountered efforts to block access to executive compensation data. The longest and most difficult struggle began in New York in 2000 and ended in 2008.
The Department's Stunning Action in April 2000
In November 1999 I filed with the New York Department of Insurance (now DFS) my routine FOIL request for all 1999 Schedule Gs to be filed in March 2000. In April 2000, in a stunning administrative action, the Department abruptly decided to black out the names, job titles, and compensation amounts of all but the directors and three top officers of each company. Executive compensation data had long been publicly filed with the Department pursuant to a state law enacted in 1906 after the Hughes-Armstrong investigation of 1905 and later amended from time to time to increase the disclosure threshold.
The April 2000 action was based on the Department's determination that disclosing the names constituted an "unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." That is one of several FOIL exemptions from disclosure. The Department took its action at the request of New York-domiciled Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States and New Jersey-domiciled Prudential Insurance Company of America. Equitable obtained an elaborate legal opinion to support the request. However, there was no opportunity for anyone to submit a legal opinion in opposition to the request, because the Department made its decision in secret and without advance notice to the public. I knew nothing about the Equitable request, the Prudential request, the legal opinion, or the April 2000 action until after the fact, when I received the documents in response to my FOIL request for all documents relating to my November 1999 FOIL request.
In their requests that the Department take action to prevent the release of Schedule G data, Equitable and Prudential made clear that the requests were prompted by an Equitable agents' association that had posted on its website the entire Schedule Gs for 1999 of several major companies, including Equitable and Prudential. Thus the requests were not prompted by my tabulations, which by then I had been publishing for 25 years.
In July 2000, because the April 2000 action was a partial denial of my November 1999 FOIL request, I filed with the Department an appeal of the partial denial. The Department denied the appeal.
In December 2000 I filed in state court in New York a petition for judicial review of the partial denial. At my attorney's suggestion I had narrowed the request to individuals who received at least $600,000, which was my threshold at the time.
In September 2001 the court ordered the Department to honor my request. The court ruled that the Department had not made an adequate case to support its privacy claim. However, the court sidestepped the basic question: Did the Department have the right to deny public access to a portion of the annual statement, which was a public document long before the enactment of FOIL, and presumably still is a public document?
The Department changed its procedures after the court ruling. The Department began to require companies to file two versions of Schedule G. The first version showed (1) names and compensation of directors and (2) names, job titles, and compensation of all other individuals for which the threshold in the statute required disclosure of the data. The second version showed (1) names and compensation of directors and (2) names, job titles, and compensation of the three top officers and all other individuals who received compensation of $600,000 or more to comply with the court ruling and my disclosure threshold. Only the second version was provided to me and other persons who filed FOIL requests for Schedule Gs.
My Victory in 2007
In February 2007, in my routine FOIL request for 2006 data, I asked for Schedule Gs with no names blacked out. In other words, I asked for the first version mentioned in the preceding paragraph. With the request I enclosed an explanatory memorandum. By then the Department was under new management, and I felt the time had come to request a reversal of the April 2000 action.
The Department, without informing me, sent my request to the Life Insurance Council of New York (LICONY), an association of companies doing business in New York. LICONY obtained an elaborate legal opinion arguing that my request should be denied.
On June 13, 2007, in a lengthy legal memorandum, the Department informed LICONY that, effective June 25, the Department "will return to its prior and longstanding practice of producing [Schedule Gs] without redaction of names." I knew nothing about any of these developments until after the fact, when I received the documents in response to my FOIL request for all documents relating to my February 2007 FOIL request.
LICONY's Victory in 2008
LICONY was enraged by the Department's reversal of the April 2000 action. LICONY quietly arranged for bills to be introduced in both houses of the New York legislature in the spring of 2008 to decimate the then 102-year-old executive compensation disclosure law. I say "quietly" because I was unaware of the existence of the bills, on which there had been no debate, no hearings, and no publicity, until I received a tip from a "Deep Throat" informer after the proposed amendment had sailed through both houses and had been sent to Governor David Paterson for his signature. I rushed a package of material to the governor and asked him to veto the amendment, but he signed it into law.
The amendment required life insurance companies doing business in New York to disclose (1) names and compensation of directors, (2) names, job titles, and compensation of the chief executive officer and the next four highest compensated employees, (3) names, job titles, and compensation of the next five highest compensated employees, and (4) job titles and compensation, but not the names, of other employees below the top ten but whose compensation exceeded $750,000. Those requirements mean that, in large companies, there are many highly paid executives whose job titles and compensation are disclosed but whose names are blacked out. In the 2015 data, for example, there are 435 names blacked out where compensation was $1 million or more in 2015. Here are the 13 companies and the numbers of blacked out names:
| Aetna Life Ins Co | 98 |
| AXA Equitable Life Ins Co | 7 |
| Guardian Life Ins Co of America | 3 |
| Lincoln Life & Annuity Co of NY | 9 |
| Massachusetts Mutual Life Ins Co | 18 |
| Metropolitan Life Ins Co | 78 |
| New York Life Ins & Annuity Corp | 8 |
| New York Life Ins Co | 40 |
| Northwestern Mutual Life Ins Co | 6 |
| Penn Mutual Life Ins Co | 3 |
| Principal Life Ins Co | 14 |
| Prudential Ins Co of America | 134 |
| Teachers Ins & Annuity Assn | 17 |
How To Obtain Data from DFS
The DFS website contains a form with which to file an online FOIL request. Go to:
https://myportal.dfs.ny.gov/web/guest-applications/ogc-foil-e-formIf you want Schedule Gs for only a few companies, indicate the names of the companies. If you want all the Schedule Gs, ask for the Schedule Gs filed by all life companies and all health companies. Asking in this way is important because, as mentioned earlier, Schedule Gs for life companies are assembled by the Life Bureau and Schedule Gs for health companies are assembled by the Health Bureau. Indicate in your request that you are willing to pay any fees. When I obtained the 2015 data recently, the Life Bureau charged a nominal fee of $1 for sending the Schedule Gs on a CD by regular mail. The Health Bureau charged nothing and sent the Schedule Gs by email in a zip file.
My May 2016 Letter to the Life Bureau
I have long been troubled by the format of Schedule G used by the Life Bureau. The problem is that the one compensation figure for each individual is for services rendered to or on behalf of the reporting company. Thus for many companies operating in New York through small subsidiaries, only a small percentage of the individual's total compensation is disclosed.
For example, as indicated in No. 163, the 2015 total compensation of Daniel Amos, AFLAC's chairman of the board, as reported in AFLAC's SEC filing, was $11,982,383. The figure for him in Schedule G of AFLAC's subsidiary, American Family Life Assurance Company of New York, was $72,055.
I have written to the Life Bureau previously on this matter, but my concern has not been addressed. On May 16, 2016, I wrote to the Life Bureau again. I inquired about the number of FOIL requests DFS received in recent years. A spokeswoman said both bureaus together received 49 FOIL requests in 2015 and have received 45 FOIL requests thus far in 2016. I have not yet received a response to the major concern expressed in my letter about the format of the Schedule G the Life Bureau uses.
Available Material
I am offering a 13-page complimentary PDF that consists of articles from the July 2000, November 2001, October 2007, October 2008, and November 2009 issues of The Insurance Forum describing the April 2000 action and its aftermath, and my May 16, 2016 letter to the Life Bureau. Email jmbelth@gmail.com and ask for the May 2016 package relating to disclosure of executive compensation data in New York.
| Compensation Data for 2015 from New York | ||
| From Life Insurance Schedule Gs | ||
| Aetna Life Ins Co | ||
| Joseph Zubretsky | $52,368,162 | |
| Mark Bertolini | 27,542,563 | |
| Ronald A Williams | 25,102,740 | |
| Karen S Rohan | 7,706,330 | |
| Margaret McCarthy | 6,271,956 | |
| Charles E Saunders | 5,811,219 | |
| Shawn Guertin | 5,032,462 | |
| William J Casazza | 4,824,170 | |
| Jean LaTorre | 3,819,331 | |
| AXA Equitable Life Ins Co | ||
| Mark Pearson | 4,698,603 | |
| Guardian Life Ins Co of America | ||
| Deanna Mulligan | 4,706,530 | |
| Lincoln Life & Annuity Co of NY | ||
| Dennis R Glass | 41,665,850 | |
| Mark E Konen | 8,206,770 | |
| Randal J Freitag | 6,980,528 | |
| Ellen G Cooper | 5,201,295 | |
| Charles C Comelio | 5,120,505 | |
| Massachusetts Mutual Life Ins Co | ||
| Roger Crandall | 24,539,221 | |
| Elaine Sarsynski | 7,584,712 | |
| Michael Rollings | 5,917,838 | |
| Michael Fanning | 4,306,430 | |
| Mark Roellig | 3,289,371 | |
| Andrew Moore | 3,196,694 | |
| Metropolitan Life Ins Co | ||
| Steven Albert Kandarian | 13,986,781 | |
| John C Hele | 4,939,644 | |
| Maria R Morris | 4,225,395 | |
| Mutual of America Life Ins Co | ||
| Thomas Moran | 5,005,453 | |
| Mutual of Omaha Ins Co | ||
| Daniel P Neary | 11,391,320 | |
| New York Life Ins Co | ||
| Theodore A Mathas | 19,723,078 | |
| John Y Kim | 9,670,600 | |
| Christopher O Blunt | 6,670,600 | |
| Mark W Pfaff | 5,290,450 | |
| Sheila K Davidson | 4,396,353 | |
| Peter J McAvinn | 3,941,692 | |
| John P Curry | 3,392,886 | |
| John T Fleurant | 3,309,062 | |
| Northwestern Mutual Life Ins Co | ||
| John E Schlifske | 13,359,233 | |
| Gregory C Oberland | 4,932,626 | |
| Ronald P Joelson | 3,443,932 | |
| Penn Mutual Life Ins Co | ||
| Eileen McDonnell | 4,820,694 | |
| Principal Life Ins Co | ||
| Larry D Zimpleman | 7,953,746 | |
| James P McCaughan | 6,348,503 | |
| Terrance J Lillis | 3,888,109 | |
| Daniel J Houston | 3,826,609 | |
| Prudential Ins Co of America | ||
| John Robert Strangfeld Jr | 18,853,167 | |
| Mark Brown Grier | 15,438,656 | |
| Charles Frederick Lowrey | 13,228,637 | |
| James J Sullivan | 10,962,810 | |
| David A Hunt | 9,284,879 | |
| Michael K Lillard | 8,225,170 | |
| Stephen Pelletier | 5,744,932 | |
| David H Bessey | 5,054,151 | |
| Robert Michael Falzon | 4,223,137 | |
| John Vibert | 3,929,850 | |
| Teachers Ins & Annuity Assn | ||
| Roger Ferguson | 8,336,777 | |
| Edward Grzbowski | 4,824,808 | |
| From Health Insurance Schedule Gs | ||
| Anthem Group | ||
| Joseph R Swedish | 14,311,079 | |
| Wayne S Deveydt | 5,239,542 | |
| Peter David Haytaian | 4,658,183 | |
| Gloria M McCarthy | 3,882,314 | |
| Brian Thomas Griffin | 3,877,421 | |
| Martin B Silverstein | 3,626,735 | |
| Thomas C Zielinski | 3,562,612 | |
| Jose D Tomas | 3,491,934 | |
| Douglas J Wenners | 3,011,945 | |
| Eastern Vision Service Plan Inc | ||
| James Robinson Lynch | 4,559,819 | |
| Humana Group | ||
| Eric C Rackow MD | 4,761,724 | |
| Brian P LeClaire | 3,417,341 | |
| Oscar Ins Corp | ||
| Brian J West | 7,281,939 | |
| UnitedHealth Group | ||
| Robert Worth Oberrender | 13,090,161 | |
| John Lawrence Larsen | 7,759,091 | |
| Jeffrey Donald Alter | 5,214,219 | |
| John William Kelly | 3,756,621 | |
| Sanford Paul Cohen MD | 3,453,977 | |
| William John Golden | 3,369,904 | |
| Thomas Joseph McGuire | 3,080,245 | |
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Email: jmbelth@gmail.com
Blog: www.josephmbelth.com
