Company: AX
Filing Date: 2025-09-25
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001299709-25-000174
Chunk: 63

Company: Axos Financial, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-09-25
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 63
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holder Services Inc. (“ISS”) benchmarks for gross burn rate: banks (1.05%) and financial services (3.68%). Using ISS methodology which weights restricted stock units double, our gross burn rate, or three-year average new award shares as a percentage of outstanding shares (on a fully diluted basis) is an average of 3.10%. Management further considered two important factors when analyzing the data and determining the share increase request: the Company’s compensation mix (more equity awards and less cash) in comparison to peers and the continued growth and contribution of the Securities Business segment makes comparison to diversified financial services more relevant.

As noted in the Executive Compensation section and throughout Item 2 and Item 3 of this Proxy Statement, the Company seeks to align the long-term economic interests of our employees with those of our stockholders and uses restricted stock units as a key component of all employees’ compensation. Our employees’ bonus awards are typically granted in a portion of cash and a portion of restricted stock unit grants. As discussed elsewhere in this Proxy Statement, our peer banks have higher levels of cash compensation and lower levels of equity compensation relative to the senior officers, and we believe the same holds true for all employees. Generally, we believe our Bank peers only use equity as a component for a portion of their employees’ compensation and instead provide higher cash bonuses to a larger portion of their workforce than we do. Approximately 82% of our U.S. workforce has indirect or direct equity ownership in Company common stock, which we believe is a much greater ownership level than our peers and better aligns our workforce with stockholder interests.

Furthermore, the benefit of our compensation methodology to stockholders is evidenced in the Company’s outperformance of its peers in terms of total compensation expense incurred. The FDIC provides Bank statistics for salaries and benefits expense as a percentage of average assets each quarter and this data includes equity compensation expense. In reviewing FDIC data for the most recent period available ended June 30, 2025, the Bank’s salaries and benefits, including equity compensation, were 0.91% of average assets compared to

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## Item 3. Approval of an Amendment to the Amended and Restated 2014 Stock Incentive Plan
a peer ratio of 1.34% for banks with greater than $1 billion in assets. This means, assuming an equal assets size, our Bank with $23.9 billion in assets at June 30, 2025, is spending approximately $103 million less than our peers on