Executive Compensation Data: Best Executive Compensation Datasets & Databases

What is Executive Compensation Data?

Executive compensation is financial compensation or other non-financial benefits that an executive receives from their firm or company for services to the organization. This could be their salary, bonuses, shares or even their benefits. Executive compensation data is information about the pay that company executives recieve.
An executive may be any corporate “officer”, from the company president to vice-president or any other upper-level manager. For this reason, an exeutive compensation dataset can be quite broad in content.

How is Executive Compensation Data collected?

Mainly, executive compensation data is collected through surveying executives. In these surveys, executives will provide information about their executive compensation which is then collected, analyzed and compiled into a report or dataset that compares executives in similar employment positions or in specializing in a similar field.
Required governmental reports, such as tax returns, can also be used as a source for executive compensation data as executives must declare their financial compensation and pay tax accordingly.
There are sometimes issues with executives not declaring their data which can lead to slightly less complete datasets. However, data providers strive to provide the most complete datasets possible and will work to give you an overview which is as comprehensive as possible.

What are the attributes of Executive Compensation Data?

In a executive compensation dataset, there are certain data points which will normally be found.
Compensation amount - the amount of financial compensation that was awarded to an executive will be recorded as well as what type of compensation this was (for example, was it a bonus, their salary or shares in the company?)
Compensation profile - some datasets will provide a compensation profile, that explain fixed and performance-based pay, cash, equity and short or long-term pay incentives in relation to performance details.
Executive details - executive compensation datasets may also provide information about the executive who is being compensated. This can be details about their position in the company and their job description as well as their history at the company since becoming an executive.

What is Executive Compensation Data used for?

Executive compensation data is primarily used by investors. They use this information to evaluate the link between the executive pay or financial compensation given and the executive’s employment performance.
They also use these datasets to asses whether pay incentives, such as bonuses, are aligned with the company’s strategy and whether they are encouraging increased productivity.
Equity plan data is used by companies with equity plans to understand how the plan’s features confirm to benchmark compensation policy guidelines.
Executive pay compensation datasets can also be used to evaluate how executives in similar roles are different companies are compensated as well as to compare factors such as base pay or short and long term incentives.

How can a user assess the quality of Executive Compensation Data?

The best executive compensation datasets will provide a comprehensive compensation profile for executives in similar roles at companies that work in the same or related fields. High quality datasets will provide information that is regularly updated with the latest compensation figures. Always make sure to read the data provider’s reviews before buying and ask for a data sample in advance to ensure their data matches your personal needs.

Where can I buy Executive Compensation Data?

Data providers and vendors listed on Datarade sell Executive Compensation Data products and samples. Popular Executive Compensation Data products and datasets available on our platform are ISS ESG Executive Compensation Data & Profiles (32k executives) by ISS ESG, Diversity and Inclusion Dataset by Akadia by Akadia, and School Principals Email List - K-12 Education Database by SchoolDataLists.

How can I get Executive Compensation Data?

You can get Executive Compensation Data via a range of delivery methods - the right one for you depends on your use case. For example, historical Executive Compensation Data is usually available to download in bulk and delivered using an S3 bucket. On the other hand, if your use case is time-critical, you can buy real-time Executive Compensation Data APIs, feeds and streams to download the most up-to-date intelligence.