Employee benefit plans

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2016

Profit sharing/401(k) plan – We maintain a profit sharing/401(k) plan to provide retirement benefits for certain employees. The plan covers a majority of our full-time employees, as well as some part-time employees. Employees are eligible to participate in the plan on the first day of the quarter following their first full year of service.

Profit sharing contributions are made solely by Deluxe and are remitted to the plan's trustee. These contributions vary based on the company's performance. 401(k) contributions are made by both employees and Deluxe. Employees under the age of 50 could contribute up to the lesser of $18 or 50% of eligible wages during 2016. Employees 50 years of age or older could make contributions of up to $24 during 2016. For the majority of employees, we match 100% of the first 1% of wages contributed by employees and 50% of the next 5% of wages contributed, beginning on the first day of the quarter following an employee's first full year of service. All employee and employer contributions are remitted to the plan's trustee. Benefits provided by the plan are paid from accumulated funds of the trust.

Employees are provided a broad range of investment options to choose from when investing their profit sharing/401(k) plan funds. Investing in our common stock is not one of these options, although funds selected by employees may at times hold our common stock.

Cash bonus programs – We provide short-term cash bonus programs under which employees may receive cash bonus payments based on our performance for a given fiscal year. Payments earned are paid directly to employees shortly after the end of the year. Previously, we also provided a long-term cash bonus program where employees received payments based on specified performance criteria over a 3-year period. We stopped using the long-term cash bonus program in 2014 when it was replaced with the performance share awards discussed in Note 10. Payments earned under the long-term program were paid directly to employees shortly after the end of each 3-year period, with the last payment occurring during 2016.

Expense recognized in the consolidated statements of income for these plans was as follows for the years ended December 31:



(in thousands)	2016		2015		2014
Performance-based compensation plans⁽¹⁾	$	19,730	$	27,456	$	29,629
401(k) expense	8,309		7,628		7,209

⁽¹⁾ Includes expense for profit sharing contributions, as they vary based on our performance. Excludes expense for stock-based compensation, which is discussed in Note 10.

Deferred compensation plan – We have a non-qualified deferred compensation plan that allows eligible employees to defer a portion of their compensation. Participants can elect to defer up to 100% of their base salary plus up to 50% of their bonus for the year. The compensation deferred under this plan is credited with earnings or losses measured by the mirrored rate of return on phantom investments elected by plan participants, which are similar to the investments available for funds invested under our profit sharing/401(k) plan. Each participant is fully vested in all deferred compensation and earnings. A participant may elect to receive deferred amounts in a lump-sum payment or in monthly installments upon termination of employment or disability. Our total liability under this plan was $3,669 as of December 31, 2016 and $3,126 as of December 31, 2015. These amounts are reflected in accrued liabilities and other non-current liabilities in the consolidated balance sheets. We hold investments in an irrevocable rabbi trust for our deferred compensation plan. These assets consist of investments in company-owned life insurance policies, which are included in long-term investments in the consolidated balance sheets, and totaled $11,270 as of December 31, 2016 and $13,397 as of December 31, 2015.