Share-Based Transactions (Notes)

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2015

Disclosure Of Compensation Related Costs Sharebased Payments [Abstract]

(9) Share-Based Transactions

The Company has outstanding equity awards under its Omnibus Incentive Plan ("OIP"). The OIP provides for the issuance of equity awards, including stock options, stock appreciation rights, restricted stock, deferred stock, RSUs, unrestricted stock, as well as cash-based awards. In addition to time-based vesting requirements, awards granted under the OIP also may be subject to specified performance criteria. Since 2010, the Company has issued equity awards to our management (officers and other key employees), non-employee directors, and sales force leaders under the OIP. For more information on equity awards granted under the OIP, see Note 14 (Share-Based Transactions) to our consolidated financial statements within our 2014 Annual Report.

In connection with our granting of equity awards to our management and members of the Board of Directors, we recognize expense over the requisite service period of the equity award. Additionally, to the extent that equity awards to members of our sales force are an incremental direct cost of successful acquisitions or renewals of life insurance policies that result directly from and are essential to the policy acquisition(s) and would not have been incurred had the policy acquisition(s) not occurred, we defer and amortize the fair value of these awards in the same manner as other deferred policy acquisition costs.

The impacts of equity awards granted are as follows:

	Three months ended September 30,				Nine months ended September 30,
	2015		2014		2015		2014
	(In thousands)
Total equity awards expense recognized	$	2,056	$	8,497	$	12,918	$	14,333
Quarterly incentive awards expense deferred		3,412		3,041		10,531		10,371

On February 23, 2015, the Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors granted equity awards to management (the “2015 management awards”) in connection with the annual approval of management incentive compensation. The 2015 management awards have time-based vesting requirements with equal and annual graded vesting over approximately three years subsequent to the grant date and include a provision for such awards to vest upon the voluntary termination of employment by any employee who is “retirement eligible” as of his or her termination date. In order to be retirement eligible, an employee must be at least 55 years old and his or her age plus years of service with the Company must equal at least 75. We recognize the expense associated with equity awards granted to retirement eligible employees immediately on the grant date, which is also the date the award is authorized. For equity awards granted to employees who are not retirement eligible on the grant date, the expense associated with these awards is recognized over the period from the grant date to the earlier of the date the employee becomes retirement eligible or the originally scheduled vesting date in the award agreement. Equity awards issued to management prior to 2015 do not contain a retirement eligibility provision, with the exception of equity awards issued to management in 2014 that were modified to include such a provision during the third quarter of 2014.