U.S. health insurers continued to push up the base salaries of top human resources executives in 2021, just as they did in 2020, according to new survey results from BDO USA.
A BDO compensation consulting team found that the base pay of health insurer HR executives who held their posts both in 2020 and in 2021 increased an average of 8.3% in 2021.
The rate of increase was up from 7.6% in 2020.
The HR executives did better, in terms of base pay increases, than health insurers' CEOs, top financial executives and top legal executives in both 2020 and 2021.
But health insurers increased total compensation more for CEOs than for other top executives.
Total direct compensation — the sum of the base salary, annual incentive pay and long-term incentive pay — increased 23.6% for health insurers in 2021, up from 12.4% in 2020.
The CEOs' base salaries increased 4.7% in 2020 and 3.9% in 2021. Their annual incentive pay increased 4.9% in 2020 and 8.6% in 2021.