Samsung Securities AT WORK Launches Industry's First RSA Service

Managing Sale Restrictions After Advance Share Grants, Simplifying Executive Disclosures, and More

Samsung Securities announced that it has launched, for the first time in the industry, a service for the granting and management of RSAs (Restricted Stock Awards, performance-based restricted stock granted in advance) through its stock-compensation-dedicated platform, "Samsung Securities AT WORK."

An RSA is a performance-based compensation scheme in which a company grants shares to its executives and employees in advance and then determines the ultimate value of the compensation based on whether they meet performance targets and fulfill their responsibilities over a certain period. Unlike cash bonuses, it is a stock-based compensation method designed to allow executives and employees to directly participate in the company’s mid- to long-term growth and performance, and it has already become a common compensation tool for executives and key talent in major advanced economies such as the United States and Japan.

RSAs differ from RSUs (Restricted Stock Units), which grant shares only after a certain period of service or after performance targets are achieved, in that RSAs grant the shares first and then finalize the compensation based on performance.

In Korea, however, the introduction and execution of RSAs have been constrained because the financial infrastructure has been insufficient to stably operate complex requirements such as mandatory holding periods, sale restrictions, and performance-condition management arising from the structure of granting shares in advance.

To resolve these institutional and system-related limitations, Samsung Securities has built an RSA-dedicated management account function within the "Samsung Securities AT WORK" platform. This account is designed to directly embed mandatory holding periods and sale restriction conditions into the account structure for the shares granted in advance, thereby enabling systematic control over any changes in conditions that may occur during the post-grant management process. It also provides a management framework that can ease the burden of disclosure obligations for executives.

Through this, Samsung Securities explained that in January it successfully executed RSA performance compensation based on treasury shares for a group of 30,000 people and is also providing disclosure-support monitoring services for the executives of the relevant company. It is being evaluated as the first case in which the RSA scheme has been implemented not merely as a conceptual制度 design, but as a platform that enables actual granting and post-grant management. In particular, the company emphasized that it is highly significant that a single securities firm has centrally managed stock-based performance compensation for such a large number of people.

Park Kyunghee, Head of the WM Division at Samsung Securities, said, "Samsung Securities AT WORK is a platform that goes beyond employee account management services to practically implement a company’s performance-compensation framework," adding, "The biggest differentiating factor is that we have built the first structure in Korea that enables both the granting and management of RSAs."

Samsung Securities plans to use the launch of this RSA service as an opportunity to continuously expand its customized platform capabilities to meet corporate clients’ needs for performance compensation and asset management for their executives and employees.