The financial crisis has had a huge impact on the way banks pay their executives and even their loan officers, but CEO pay is definitely creeping back upward. The smallest community banks to the international mega-banks have all made changes in the last few years to reduce the likelihood that employees will take big risks that threaten the long-term health of their financial institutions.

Many banks are moving away from short-term incentives, paying smaller amounts in cash bonuses for meeting short-term performance goals, and paying equity gradually over a longer period of time in the form of restricted stock based on performance goals.

One of those banks is First Commonwealth Financial Corp. in Indiana, Pennsylvania, a $6 billion-asset institution with 112 offices.

Bob Ventura, chairman of the board’s compensation and human resources committee, said at Bank Director’s Bank Executive & Board Compensation conference in Chicago recently that the bank has moved from paying a roughly 75 percent/25 percent ratio of compensation in short/long term pay to now using a 65/35 ratio.

Even more changes have been made from a risk standpoint among loan officers.

“We have gotten away from volume goals and put some profitability goals in there,’’ he said, adding that there’s an 18-month time period to get paid the full incentive package.

Even though the bank is not a recipient of Troubled Asset Relief Program money from the federal government, it still follows TARP compensation guidelines. The bank conducts third-party annual reviews of its compensation plans, and has created a position for a chief risk officer who reviews compensation plans and makes recommendations to the risk committee of the board.

 “We have evolved from plans that were primarily paid in cash,’’ he said.

Todd Leone, a principal at McLagan compensation consultants in Minneapolis and a speaker at the conference, laid out some general trends, including:

• The use of full value equity plans (such as restricted stock) continues to increase.
• Most banks don’t use stock options as a form of equity compensation, no matter what the bank size is.
• The larger the bank, the more frequent the use of equity compensation.
• Banks are increasingly using credit quality measures in performance plans.

Bank CEO pay increased last year as the economy strengthened and bank balance sheets improved, although most of the increases were tied to cash and equity incentives, Leone said. The biggest pay increases were for CEOs at the largest banks, who saw their paychecks drop substantially in 2008 and 2009 following the financial crisis. The median cash compensation for big bank CEOs is now roughly what it was in 2006, $2.3 million, according to McLagan’s analysis of 717 publicly traded bank proxy statements, 41 of them banks with more than $15 billion in assets.

The following table shows the breakdown in CEO pay last year:

Median 2010 CEO Compensation

*Cash compensation is salary plus all other cash incentives, like bonuses. Direct comp is  cash compensation plus equity. Total compensation adds direct compensation, retiree benefits and all other compensation.

Source: McLagan