Company: CFG-PE
Filing Date: 2025-03-10
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0000759944-25-000044
Chunk: 9

Company: CITIZENS FINANCIAL GROUP INC/RI
Filing Date: 2025-03-10
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 9
---
 our Compensation and HR Committee and senior management. Maintaining an open dialogue with shareholders is important to us and during 2024 we continued our long-standing shareholder outreach program. Since our IPO, we have held conversations with shareholders in the fall of each year. Starting in 2023, we expanded our program to hold additional discussions with shareholders following our proxy filing and prior to our annual meeting. During 2024, our first round of engagement was held after we filed our proxy statement and prior to our annual meeting. Our second round of engagement was held during the fall of 2024 with a particular focus on understanding any specific concerns about our compensation program in light of lower say-on-pay support in 2024.

The Company invited a substantial number of shareholders to engagement sessions and held in-depth discussions with shareholders that voted both in favor of and against our say-on-pay proposal. Nearly all of these conversations were led by Edward J. Kelly III, our Lead Director and Chair of our Compensation and HR Committee, and were joined by Susan LaMonica, our Chief Human Resources Officer, as well as representatives from our Legal, Reward, Investor Relations, and Sustainability teams. We also met with proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis to gain their perspectives. Discussions focused largely on executive compensation, leadership succession planning, sustainability, and board governance matters.

| Outreach |     | Meetings Held |     | Lead Director Engagement |

During these meetings, we heard that while shareholders feel the amount of executive compensation has been appropriately and consistently aligned with Company performance, there are certain elements of our program and related disclosure that some shareholders would like to see further evolve. In response to this feedback, during 2024 we made several changes to our compensation program structure and disclosure in this proxy statement.

We also discussed with shareholders the Leadership Succession Awards granted in June 2024, including why the Compensation and HR Committee determined granting the awards was necessary. Most shareholders were supportive of our rationale for these awards and some provided specific feedback regarding the content of our disclosure on this topic, which we have endeavored to incorporate in this proxy statement to be responsive to their feedback.

#### 142025 Proxy Statement

#### Proxy Statement Summary
Please see "Compensation Matters—Compensation Discussion and Analysis—Executive Compensation Overview—Responsiveness to Shareholders and Say-on-Pay Outcome" for additional detail about what we heard in our shareholder engagement sessions and actions taken as a result.

#### Leadership Succession Awards
One of the primary duties of the Compensation and HR Committee is CEO and executive succession planning