How Aflac Pays

Professional ladder — B1 through B5

Management ladder — B6 through B10

Executive and board — B11 through Board

Disclosed executive layer

Track divergence

Hierarchy qualifications and legacy structures

• The United States evidence is a title ladder rather than a numeric grade map. Aflac postings expose I, II and III suffixes, principal, manager, director, assistant vice president, second vice president, vice president, senior vice president, executive vice president and president, but no enterprise band code.
• Aflac Japan runs a job-based system that its own recruiting material describes as roughly 1,600 job descriptions, and employee pay reports consistently describe a G11 to G29 grade vocabulary. That architecture is far more granular than a twelve-row summary can carry.
• Belfast has no numeric grade architecture in any public source. Aflac Northern Ireland titles should be read as a technology-centre ladder rather than an extension of the Japan grade system.
• The crosswalk is most reliable for engineering, actuarial and operations roles where postings disclose ranges, and least reliable for investments, where Aflac Global Investments visa records show a materially higher pay profile than ordinary insurance operations at the same nominal title.
• The non-employee director row is a governance package rather than an employment band, and both it and the two executive rows are excluded from the range chart.

Peer-level mapping

Office and market catalogue — calibration factors versus Columbus

Aflac discloses headcount by business segment rather than by city, so this catalogue cannot rank offices by employee count. Columbus is the headquarters and the deepest cross-functional United States hub, Tokyo is the principal Japan hub, New York is disproportionately investments and senior corporate, and Belfast is a smaller technology delivery centre reported inside Corporate and Other.

Columbus anchor medians — the basis of every modeled cell

• The Columbus column is the anchor. B2, B4, B5, B6 and B9 come directly from Aflac job postings that disclose a base salary range, which is the strongest employee-pay evidence in either bundle.
• Posted ranges exclude incentive pay and benefits by Aflac's own wording, so the bonus column at every level below B11 is a modelled target rather than a disclosed one.
• Tokyo is calibrated so that the most junior band lands close to the ¥3,672,000 annualised new-graduate starting salary that Aflac Japan discloses at ¥306,000 a month, and rises towards 56 percent of the Columbus anchor at the top of the ladder.
• Belfast is calibrated from Aflac Northern Ireland salary observations and Northern Ireland market data at roughly £35,000 to £48,000 for early-career engineers and £53,000 to £70,000 for senior engineers, with no public band above senior manager.
• The B11 and B12 rows are proxy disclosures converted for comparison only. They are enterprise executive values, not a local pay range in any selected city.

Executive incentive targets — percent of salary

Named-executive outcomes

• Simple plan capacity at 31 December 2025 was 43.5 percent remaining, calculated as 32.6 million available against 75.0 million authorised, with roughly 42.4 million used or reserved. That is a capacity measure and not cumulative historical utilisation, because forfeitures and award-counting rules both feed back into capacity.
• Capacity fell only slightly over the first half of 2026, from about 32.6 million shares available to about 31.7 million at 30 June 2026, which is consistent with a grant population concentrated in a few hundred officers rather than a whole workforce.
• Share-based compensation expense of $82 million in 2025 is roughly 4 percent of the $2.1 billion compensation and benefits expense. That ratio is the clearest single measure of how narrowly Aflac equity is distributed.
• Aflac does not disclose an India employee stock ownership trust, a BSE or NSE allotment programme or any SEBI plan, because Aflac Incorporated is a United States issuer. The applicable disclosure system is SEC EDGAR.

Equity plan capacity and grant activity

Vesting — common reported employee schedule

Employee awards under the Long-Term Incentive Plan generally vest ratably over three years, which is the schedule shown above. Two important exceptions apply. Currently disclosed executive time-based restricted stock unit grants cliff-vest in full on the third anniversary rather than ratably, and performance-based restricted stock is a single settlement after the three-year performance period is certified. Non-employee director awards generally vest at the next annual meeting, a one-year schedule.

Eligibility by hierarchy level

• There is no published grade threshold at which Aflac equity begins. Filings establish that officers and key talent receive awards and disclose named-executive grants in full, but direct-grant eligibility for ordinary individual contributor levels is not disclosed and no typical grant value exists for any band from B1 to B10.
• What ordinary United States employees are clearly offered is purchase access through the AFL Stock Plan, and this should not be described as a discounted employee stock purchase plan. The 2020 prospectus discloses no general employee discount, which makes it materially less valuable than the lookback-and-discount plans common in large-cap technology.
• Reading the disclosures as evidence that every principal engineer, manager or director receives restricted stock units is the single most common error here. The correct reading is that publicly observable direct equity is heavily concentrated in senior leadership.
• Observed 2025 grant-date values were $11.34 million for the chief executive and roughly $2.46 million to $3.09 million for the other named executive officers, equal to about 21,000 to 27,000 shares at the $116.50 illustrative price used in one bundle.
• Stock-ownership guidelines start at senior officer level and are substantial: 8 times base salary for the chairman and chief executive, 5 times for the president of Aflac Incorporated, 4 times for the chairman or president of Aflac US and Aflac Japan, 3 times for other Section 16 officers and 1 time for non-Section 16 executive and senior vice presidents, all with a four-year compliance period.

Indicative annual grant value by band — Columbus, GA

Annualized planning value (±25%), not the face value of every new-hire grant. Share equivalents use the $118.2 reference price at 24 August 2026 close and ignore plan valuation rules and PSU performance. Highlighted rows are disclosed grant-date stock awards.

Named executive target equity

The 2025 cycle raised Max K. Brodén by 8.8 percent to $925,000, Virgil R. Miller by 17.9 percent to $825,000, J. Bradley Dyslin by a cited 14.3 percent across adjustments and Audrey Boone Tillman by 10 percent to $825,000, while Daniel P. Amos stayed at $1,441,100. His all other compensation of $2,029,679 includes significant security and aircraft-related perquisites alongside retirement and deferred-compensation contributions. The two research bundles state Brodén's title differently, as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer in one and President and Chief Operating Officer of Aflac Incorporated in the other, and they also disagree on the salary and stock splits for Dyslin, Miller and Tillman.

Board compensation framework

Actual 2025 director totals ran from $315,092 to $582,901. Most continuing directors landed between about $315,092 and $405,128; Michael A. Forrester received $582,901 because his 2025 stock-award column was $492,901 rather than the standard annual award.

Not publicly disclosed

Modeled promotion planning timeline

The most useful public progression signal is Aflac's own posting language. It states that compensation decisions weigh education, experience, licensure, certifications, geography and peer compensation, and that it is not typical to hire at or near the top of a posted range in order to preserve room for salary growth. That means the posted maximum is a range boundary rather than a likely offer, and that within-band movement is a real part of progression alongside promotion. Posting experience floors give a rough shape as well: entry roles at 0 to 2 years, Engineer III at 4 or more years and Principal at 6 or more years. In Japan, employee reports describe a new hire starting at G11 and often reaching G12 around the third year.

Dataset summary

City-level H-1B wage history

All-years aggregates. P25/P75 are rounded reconstruction values marked modeled; medians and record counts are the stronger fields.

Selected title / worksite records

Evidence classification

Explicit “Not publicly disclosed” index

Known gaps and diligence before relying on a cell

1. 1The two bundles disagree on the non-CEO rows of the 2025 Summary Compensation Table. One reports Dyslin at $898,750 salary and $2,868,244 stock, Miller at $891,667 and $2,868,244 for a $6,716,822 total, and Tillman at $808,333 and $2,455,281; the other reports Dyslin at $765,000 and $2,878,000, Miller at $825,000 and $3,546,000 for a $6,873,000 total, and Tillman at $825,000 and $2,758,000. The executive table here uses the first set because it states exact dollar figures for every column and its stock values reconcile with its own named-executive grant table. The Amos and Brodén rows are identical in both.
2. 2The incentive-outcome table uses the second bundle's target and paid pairs instead, because only that set reproduces the 155.0 to 176.3 percent attainment range that both bundles state. Applying the first bundle's salaries to the disclosed target percentages gives Dyslin 129 percent of target, which contradicts the disclosed range.
3. 3The bundles use different foreign-exchange snapshots for the same 25 August 2026 date, at 159.2480 against 159.3287 yen, 95.4075 against 95.7203 rupees, 0.733479 against 0.733986 pounds and 1.39836 against 1.398601 Australian dollars. This report standardises on the second set, which covers every currency used here.
4. 4The share-price reference differs. One bundle uses a $118.20 close on 24 August 2026 and the other an approximate $116.50 for grant-value illustrations. This report uses $118.20 because it is a dated market close; illustrative share counts quoted from the other bundle still reference $116.50.
5. 5The Amos gift transfer of 42,625 shares is dated 12 February 2026 in one bundle and 20 February 2026 in the other. This report uses the later date and flags the conflict.
6. 6Brodén's title is stated as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer in one bundle and President and Chief Operating Officer of Aflac Incorporated in the other. Both cannot be current, and the proxy filing itself would settle it.
7. 7The two bundles use incompatible level taxonomies, a B1 to B12 normalization in one and a U1 to U5 plus M1 to M8 split in the other. This report adopts the B1 to B12 frame and folds the second taxonomy's title evidence into it, which means the band boundaries are a merge decision rather than a source figure.
8. 8City calibration factors for the benchmark-only markets are fitted across the ten non-executive bands from one bundle's benchmark tables. The fit is poorest for India, where the underlying curve is convex rather than linear, so mid-ladder Indian cells read a few points high.
9. 9Aflac Northern Ireland's own materials disclose benefits but no salary bands, so every Belfast figure above senior manager is a market extrapolation with no company evidence behind it.
10. 10The H-1B record counts and medians disagree across aggregators for the same fiscal year, at 6 to 14 records for FY2026 depending on the entity filter and at medians between $120,000 and $153,165. This report preserves each extract separately rather than averaging them.
11. 11No companywide 2025 or 2026 salary-hike percentage, pay freeze, salary cut, campus offer revision or off-cycle correction was located in any source, and no attrition rate is published at any frequency.

FX rates used — 1 USD equals, snapshot 2026-08-25

Single-date conversion layer for comparability; it ignores payroll-date FX, tax, purchasing power, benefits valuation and hedging. Compensation intelligence, not legal, tax, investment, immigration or employment advice.

Source register — 14 sources

Total headcount has been essentially flat for three years while compensation and benefits expense rose from about $1.9 billion to about $2.1 billion, which implies real per-employee cost growth rather than growth by hiring. The internal mix moved steadily: Aflac US added 149 people across the two years while Corporate and Other shed 163. Aflac publishes no city-level headcount and no attrition rate, so the segment split is the only geographic signal in the filings.

Revenue and workforce distribution

Aflac discloses total revenue and a Japan share of adjusted revenue rather than a full geographic revenue table, so this panel pairs the disclosed revenue figures with the segment headcount split. Adjusted revenue is a non-GAAP measure and the 53 percent Japan share is not directly comparable with the $17.2 billion total-revenue figure.