Company: MBINL
Filing Date: 2025-04-04
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001104659-25-032188
Chunk: 24

Company: Merchants Bancorp
Filing Date: 2025-04-04
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 24
---
 – governance documents section. Compensation Philosophy and Objectives While we are headquartered in and most of our executive officers are located in Indiana, we compete and measure our performance on both local and national levels. We strive to be among the top performing banks in the nation. Our compensation philosophy reflects this strategy and expectation. In establishing our executive compensation program, the Compensation Committee considers the practices of our peers, but does not set compensation at a specific percentile of our peers. Instead, the Compensation Committee views peer data as one tool available to them for consideration, along with market conditions and the executive officer’s current and future responsibilities, among other factors. We structure our executive compensation program to align with our overall expectations and to motivate our NEOs to drive actual results, but at the same time not encourage excessive risk taking behaviors. In particular:

| What We Do |                                                           |     | What We Do Not Do |                                                            |
| ●          | Consider peer group information in compensation decisions |     | ●                 | Provide for single-trigger payments upon change in control |

16

| ● | Only provide for double-trigger severance payments upon a change in control                                                          |     | ● | Reprice equity awards                                                                                               |
| ● | Vest equity awards ratably over multiple years                                                                                       |     | ● | Provide tax gross-ups                                                                                               |
| ● | Tie equity awards to overall Company performance using measures that are important to shareholders (e.g., revenue, return on equity, 
 and earnings per share)                                                                                                              |     | ● | Guarantee cash awards – incentive compensation may be reduced to zero if threshold performance measures are not met |

Prior Year’s Say-on-Pay Vote At our 2024 annual meeting, over 70% of the votes cast by our shareholders were in favor of the compensation provided to our NEOs. This result affirmed majority shareholder support of our approach to executive compensation, and informed the Compensation Committee’s discussions during the year, which resulted in no significant changes. Additionally, at our 2023 annual meeting, our shareholders had the opportunity to provide a non-binding, advisory vote on the frequency of our say-on-pay vote, for the first time. Over 98% of the votes cast by our shareholders were in favor of having a say-on-pay vote every year. In recognition of that vote, a non-binding, advisory say-on-pay vote will occur at the Annual Meeting so that any shareholder concerns about executive pay can be acknowledged and considered in a timely manner. The Compensation Committee will continue to consider the results from this year’s say-on-pay advisory