Company: MFAN
Filing Date: 2025-04-18
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001140361-25-014577
Chunk: 71

Company: MFA FINANCIAL, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-04-18
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 71
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 in 2024), authorize payments to executives that may not be fully deductible if the Compensation Committee believes that such payments are in the Company’s interests. Compensation Risk Considerations The Compensation Committee monitors the risks and rewards associated with our compensation programs and considers, in establishing our compensation programs, whether they encourage unnecessary or excessive risk taking.

| MFA Financial, Inc. | 53 | 2025 Proxy Statement |

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Compensation Committee designs our compensation programs with features that are intended to mitigate risk without diminishing the incentive nature of the compensation. We believe our compensation programs encourage and reward prudent business judgment and appropriate risk taking over the long term. With respect to the primary elements of our compensation programs, we use a number of practices designed to help mitigate unnecessary risk taking, including:

| • | annual base salaries for all employees, including the Named Executive Officers, which are fixed in amount and determined or approved in advance by the Compensation Committee and/or the Board; |

| • | annual incentive compensation, which for 2024 was partly or wholly discretionary and subjectively determined for all employees (including the IRM Bonus for Messrs. Knutson and Wulfsohn), is determined or approved by the Compensation Committee and/or the Board; and |

| • | long-term incentive compensation is determined or approved in advance by the Compensation Committee and/or the Board and typically vests over a multi-year time period and/or is subject to the achievement of one or more performance criteria. Such compensation may also, in certain instances, be subject to forfeiture upon termination of service and subject to retention requirements. |

With respect to the IRM Bonus paid to each of Mr. Knutson and Mr. Wulfsohn for 2024, mitigating factors included in the use of this element of compensation consisted of the Compensation Committee’s right to apply, in any given year, a discretionary adjustment to adjust this component of each such executive’s annual incentive award based upon the Compensation Committee’s assessment of certain company-related, market-related and individual performance factors. The Compensation Committee continually assesses our executive compensation programs and has implemented additional policies and practices that we believe have further mitigated compensation driven risk, including the adoption of a clawback policy and executive officer stock ownership guidelines. Based on the foregoing, we believe that our compensation programs for 2024 were appropriately balanced, did not motivate or encourage unnecessary or excessive risk taking and did not create risks that were reasonably likely to have a material adverse effect on the Company.

| MFA Financial, Inc. | 54 |