Membership

As a member-led organisation we are always keen to hear views from our members on all areas of employee share ownership. We meet regularly with HMRC – and are a member of the HMRC Share Schemes Forum – HM Treasury, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Members of Parliament, and other regulatory and industry bodies, to express our members’ views and to ensure that the benefits of employee share ownership continue to be understood and appreciated by those in positions of influence.

ProShare is the principal lobbyist for employee share ownership in the UK and has a strong track record of influence at the heart of Government. We were one of the original lobbyists for the creation of a new form of all-employee share plan - the Share Incentive Plan (SIP) - which came into being in 2000/2001. We helped secure compensation guarantees from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) for Save as You Earn (SAYE) option holders in 2008, and we led a five year campaign to increase the maximum saving limits for participants. This resulted in a doubling of the SAYE savings limit from £250 a month to £500 a month in April 2014, as well as limit increases for SIP participants.

More recently, ProShare played key roles in gaining HM Treasury’s support for extending the SAYE contributions break period from 6 months to 12 months for all participants back in 2018 and, in July 2020, the extension of the ‘disqualifying event’ rule for EMI option holders who can no longer meet the relevant working time requirement because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We also provided a full response, after speaking with our members, to the Chancellor’s Call for Evidence on Enterprise Management Incentives (EMI) schemes and plans.

ProShare has long campaigned for the modernisation of SAYE and the SIP, the UK’s flagship all-employee plans with close to 2.5m participants. In 2022 ProShare was instrumental in having the reform of employee share plans discussed in Parliament twice. Labour MP Sir George Howarth secured parliamentary time to introduce draft legislation designed to reform the UK’s all-employee share plans. His Ten-Minute Rule Bill - Employee Share Ownership (Reform) – which ProShare helped draft, called for a number of specific changes to the current rules including introducing ‘a new employee share ownership scheme allowing preferential access for lower income workers’, and called for the Share Incentive Plan (SIP) holding period to be reduced from five to three years.

You can read the full text of the speech via Hansard here.

Over the last two years ProShare has significantly increased its lobbying efforts in an attempt to secure changes to SIP and SAYE, with the primary objective of increasing employee participation rates. Efforts were focused initially on persuading the government to undertake a consultation exercise to explore how best to reform employees share ownership schemes, ensuring they are fit for purpose in the 21st century. This was in recognition of the fact that as the world of work has changed, participation rates have been plateauing.
Having met with well over 50 parliamentarians, ProShare has prosecuted that case for reform strongly and consistently. The ultimate recognition of this was the Treasury's decision in summer 2023 to consult on reforming the SIP and SAYE. ProShare played a major role in securing a strong industry response, making the case directly to the Treasury via the Call for Evidence consultation.

Whilst the 2024 general election has delayed the process, ProShare will continue to press the Treasury to take forward the consultation and publish the government's response. Since consulting is a formal government process, there is no reason why the interruption of an election should represent the termination of the process. It may be that the election of a new government serves to unblock whatever has been slowing down the publication of the government’s response.

Our members receive significantly discounted admission to all our events. 

Our flagship events of the year are the Annual Conference which attracts close to 400 share plan professionals and industry experts, and our prestigious Annual Awards night – the Oscars night of the share plan world!

Our Summer Networking event has been a very popular addition to our calendar of events, and will continue to follow on directly from the launch for our annual SAYE and SIP Survey. All our events offer ample and varied opportunities for sponsorship, client hospitality and networking. We also run informal social and networking events for our members throughout the year.

Celebrating Excellence – our all-day share plans masterclass – is a fantastic opportunity to hear success stories from ProShare award winners, and is rounded off with a drinks reception where attendees can socialise and network with their friends, colleagues and industry peers.

We run various free-to-attend members-only focus groups for core interest areas including:

• Corporate Governance
• Global Issues
• Tax Advantage Share Plans
• Share Plans and Remuneration in Financial Services
• SME (Small to medium sized enterprise)
• Share Plan Comms 
• Trust and Offshore Issues (new for 2024 TBC)

Member organisations can tailor who attends from their various teams depending on the interest in a specific area.

Each group meets (online or hybrid) at least twice a year. We also run additional focus groups where the need arises, such as a change in regulations and requirements, key industry updates, government consultations and so on.

All focus group meetings are led by industry experts and calls are conducted under the ‘Chatham House’ rule to ensure compliance with relevant competition law.

Members receive substantial discounts when booking:

• Seminars, training courses and workshops
• Conference delegate places
• Tables at the Annual Awards
• Exclusive member-only events

Our members have the opportunity to post their share plans-related roles and vacancies on our website. We also promote our members’ events where these might be of interest to the wider membership through our newsletters, LinkedIn group and via our social media channels.

ProShare is committed to helping share plans professionals to develop their own skills and capabilities (and those of their workforces), and to advance their careers in share plans. Our close relationship with the Chartered Governance Institute training team means that members can also benefit from the Institute’s wider training and development programme.

ProShare offers bespoke, on-site training sessions which our members with larger workforces engaged in the operation or administration of share plans find especially useful. This is an extremely cost-effective and efficient way to train groups of employees whilst minimizing impact to ‘BAU’ operations.

All members receive a free copy of the annual ProShare SAYE & SIP Survey report. No other UK survey covers as much of the UK share plans market as this, which makes it an ideal tool for benchmarking plans against good practice and market trends. The 2023 Report will be launched in Summer 2024.

From time to time we commission additional independent research, working with carefully selected partners and academics. In 2017 we undertook research focussed on Millennials and their engagement with all-employee share plans and share ownership; the ‘Attitudes to Employee Share Ownership’ report.

For 2020-21 ProShare commissioned the Social Market Forum to undertake research to support our lobbying objectives and to inform and support the Share Plan industry. In May 2021 ProShare launched the SMF report - “A stake in success - Re-imagining employee share plans for the 2020’s” - with recommendations for broadening the use of share plans as the UK focuses on the economic recovery post COVID.

Our twice monthly e-mail newsletter now reaches more than two thousand industry contacts and provides up-to-date information and opinions on hot topics and technical developments, including topical articles from members. It also helps members to engage with our events, know what’s coming up, and plan and book their attendance in advance. We also offer members the opportunity to contribute thought leadership blogs and pieces.

ProShare is very active on LinkedIn, helping to spread the word on employee share ownership and related topics. You can join us on LinkedIn here.

To see how you can get the most of your ProShare membership please contact:

team@proshare.org