Compensation Discussion and Analysis Template

CFA Institute, in partnership with the CD&A working group, offers this CD&A template as a first step toward making compensation communications clearer and more relevant to investors. To achieve these goals, the working group members agreed that the template should help issuers produce a CD&A that, like any useful communications document, tells a story. In this case, the story concerns a company's compensation policies, practices, and decisions. Members of the working group also agreed that the template should guide issuers in creating a document that can be read and understood by average retail investors. Indeed, after reading the CD&A, investors should be able to understand, retain, and effectively apply such information when making investment decisions or casting "say-on-pay" proxy votes.