HR-XML 3.0 Standards, 2009 September 23.
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To attract and retain employees, many employers offer employee stock plans. Two common types of plans are stock options and employee stock purchase plans (ESPP).
These programs can vary by jurisdiction and applicable tax and security laws. The workgroup that developed HR-XML's stock plan specifications considered the types of programs common in the United States, Germany, and the UK. While the exact composition of stock plans vary by country, basic stock plan processes and integration requirements are sufficiently similar across jurisdictions to be supported by HR-XML's generalized and extensible set of stock plan specifications.
The seven key stock schemas in the HR-XML 3.0 library are:
StockDeposit. Contains instructions for the broker to distribute stock to a given set of participants. The broker receives a stock transfer by the ESPP sponsor company's transfer agent and therefore needs this instruction before distribution can take place.
StockOptionExerciseOrder. Contains a collection of information relating to the exercise of a stock option award.
StockOptionExerciseConfirmation. Contains information communicated from a broker to a stock option plan administrator regarding the exercise of stock options by a program participant. The exact composition of the message varies depending on the type of program and the context, but information communicated in the confirmation may include: the number of shares exercised, the exercise price, fair market value (FMV) on the date of exercise, sales price (may differ from the FMV), taxes due/withheld, number of shares used to pay the taxes, and the amount of the taxable gain.
StockOptionGrant. Contains a collection of information relating to the award for an individual's option to purchase company stock shares.
StockPlan. Contains a collection of information relevant to creating and maintaining employee stock plan records. Supported plans are Stock Option, Stock Purchase Plans, and Stock Awards.
StockPlanParticipant. Contains a collection of information about an account holder in a employer-sponsored stock option or stock purchase program.
StockSaleConfirmation. Contains details regarding the outcome of a stock sale, including identification of the participant, the sale date, quantity of stock sold, stock price, an identifier to tie the shares sold to the original purchase. This noun typically would be used by a broker to accomplish certain required reporting back to the administrator of an employee stock purchase plan through which the sold shares were originally acquired.
The sections below describe the principal integration scenarios supported by the HR-XML stock plan specifications. Specific interactions are addressed in the separate chapters referenced in the section called “Stock: Related Documentation”.
This section discusses integration supporting stock option plan setup, grant, and exercise processes.
In addition to the employee or participant, the other principal actors in the scenario are:
Stock Plan Sponsor. The employer sponsoring the employee stock plan and whose shares are offered through the plan.
Stock Plan Administrator. The organization responsible for maintaining plan data, facilitating transactions, and enforcing plan rules. The role of the Administrator can be held by the Company, the Broker, or a third-party.
Broker. In the context of employee stock plans, a Broker is a service provider that buys or sells securities on behalf of the Participant or the Stock Plan Sponsor.