Trends in Equity Plan Administration: 6 Key Insights

On November 19, the NASPP webinar “2025 Equity Administration Survey: Benchmarks & Trends” will present highlights from the NASPP/Deloitte Tax 2025 Equity Administration Survey. Looking for a sneak peek at the trends that will be highlighted during the webcast? Here are six trends from the survey.

1. HR/comp & benefits typically have primary responsibility for plan administration

I often hear it said that stock plan administration doesn’t have an organizational home. But 68% of respondents to the 2025 survey report that primary responsibility for administration of their stock plans is housed within the human resources or compensation and benefits organizations.

That seems like a pretty large majority for something that is supposed to vary considerably from company to company. Moreover, it’s consistent with past editions of the survey, going back all the way to the first survey we conducted in the early 1990s. Maybe stock plan administration does have a home after all.

If you work for a tech or life science company, you might be surprised to learn this, especially if your company is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley. Less than half of tech companies (and only 15% of Silicon Valley companies) house primary responsibility for equity plan administration in HR/comp & Benefits.

Tech/life science companies are more likely than other companies to house primary responsibility for equity plan administration in accounting or finance. Overall, only 19% of companies locate plan administration in accounting or finance, but 34% of tech/life science companies do so and almost half of Silicon Valley companies place stock plan administration in these organizations.

2. Equity plan administration is a team effort

No one will be surprised to learn that many different departments participate in administration of equity plans, even if they don’t have primary responsibility for plan oversight.

A majority of respondents report that the following departments participate in administration of their plans:

• HR/comp & benefits (90%)
• Payroll (74 percent)
• Legal (73 percent)
• Accounting (72 percent)
• Finance (60 percent)

A minority, but not insignificant, percentage of respondents report that tax (49 percent), treasury (43 percent), and HRIS/IT (43 percent) also participate in plan administration.

3. Staffing levels are commensurate with the workforce size

Not surprisingly, companies with larger workforces have more personnel dedicated to administering their plans. Just over half of respondents (52%) with over 5,000 employees report that they have two or more personnel dedicated to plan administration; 19% report that they have four or more dedicated personnel.

Conversely, 85% of respondents with less than 750 employees report that they have just one or no dedicated personnel administering their plan.

4. COVID has had a lasting effect on work arrangements for in-house stock plan administration personnel

A whopping 90% of respondents report that in-house personnel have either hybrid or remote work arrangements:

• 56% of respondents report that at least some in-house administrative personnel have hybrid work arrangements (in office only one to four days per week).
• 52% report that some administrative staff are fully remote.

Only 10% of respondents report that their administrative personnel work in the office full-time (five days per week). This is the opposite of what we found when we asked about work arrangements in our 2020 survey. At that time (March/April 2020, in the very early stages of the COVID stay-at-home orders—you remember, when we all thought we’d be back in the office in a couple months), only about 10% of respondents reported telework arrangements for their stock plan administration staff.

5. AI is not yet widely deployed in administration of stock plans

Less than 30 percent of respondents report that they utilize AI in administering their equity plans.

When companies are using AI, they are most often using internal tools provided by their employer (20 percent of overall respondents). They are most likely using AI to write emails, presentations, and documents (82 percent of respondents that use AI). Some respondents that use AI leverage it to assist with routine tasks (28 percent) or research (37 percent).

6. Outsourcing of administrative tasks, particularly transaction processing, is common

Most companies outsource at least a portion of plan administration, but respondents are divided as to how much to outsource.

Seventy-one percent of respondents outsource at least some aspects of stock plan administration: 19 percent outsource most functions and 52 percent are partially outsourced. Only 9% of respondents report that they do not outsource any portion of plan administration.

The most commonly outsourced tasks are:

• Processing of award vesting and releases (51 percent of respondents)
• Distribution of grant agreements and materials (45 percent)
• Processing of stock option exercises (45 percent)

Discover more trends in plan administration

There is so much more data we’ll be covering during the webinar, including the following topics:

• Trends in grant guidelines
• Tax payment methods for awards
• The latest practices in mobility tracking
• Participant communication and education practices
• Insider trading policies

For more trends on equity plan administration, don’t miss the webinar “2025 Equity Administration Survey: Benchmarks & Trends.”