JAKARTA. Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), Indonesia’s most profitable lender, plans to make employees part-owners of the company through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) as part of an effort to maximize benefit to stakeholders.
BRI president director Asmawi Syam said that the ESOP program was in the pipeline and would be launched after the permit was sealed. The company is still preparing the details of the program, including the amount of shares to be involved.
“Next year, when our performance grows higher, we will conduct an ESOP. Not an MSOP [management stock option plan], but an ESOP. This is a long-term show of appreciation for our employees,” he said to thejakartapost.com during a visit to London for The Banker Award ceremony on Thursday.
An ESOP is a program that provides a workforce with stock ownership in its employer company, which is usually treated as employee bonus packages for good work performance. The stocks are allocated to employees and may be held in an ESOP trust until the employee retires or leaves the company.
The program, Asmawi further said, was also in accordance with Indonesian Financial Service Authority's (OJK) recommendation that listed companies distribute more shares to more individual investors.
BRI’s director of compliance Randi Anto explained that BRI had spent up to Rp 1.3 trillion (US$93.9 million) per month paying salaries to its 130,000 employees across the country, equaling Rp 10 million per person on average.
“With that amount of money, you could build three hotels per month, which would cost roughly Rp 400 billion each. The contribution that we already make to our staff is that big. However, we are now trying to give them more sustainable benefits [as well],” he said.
BRI is celebrating 120 years of operation on Dec. 16, marking its status as the longest local bank to operate in Indonesia. (Arif Gunawan S)
