equityguard.co

What it is

EquityGuard is an equity plan capital management tool for treasury and governance teams at FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies. Rather than focusing on the traditional HR workflow for granting equity incentives, it targets the capital costs behind equity plans: LTI, options, SAYE, EBT funding, hedging arrangements, and dilution capacity are often managed across different teams, systems, and advisers, which can lead to overfunding, overlapping hedges, and inefficient use of capital.

Core features and product capabilities

Based on the information on its website, the core idea behind EquityGuard is “cross-book capital discipline.” Its first capability is cross-book visibility, bringing LTI grants, option exercises, SAYE maturities, EBT funding, and hedge positions into a single capital view. The second is drift detection, which continuously compares live share prices, dilution headroom, financial cash flows, and the original decision assumptions to surface cost deviations early. The third is forward-looking financial forecasting, helping finance teams plan funding around vesting schedules, option windows, and SAYE maturity waves. It also emphasizes EBT optimization and hedge discipline: determining when to fund, when to buy, whether existing trust assets are sufficient to cover future vesting, and whether hedge coverage matches actual liabilities.

Pricing, trial, and deployment

The public pages do not disclose plans, pricing, payment methods, or whether there is a free version or standard trial. At present, it only offers “Request access” and indicates that early access is aimed at FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 treasury and governance teams. This suggests it is more of an invitation-based early-stage enterprise product than a general SaaS product that can be purchased through self-service signup. The site also provides no information about cloud deployment, self-hosting, third-party integrations, APIs, permission management, or security and compliance.

Pros and cons

Its main strength is the very clearly defined vertical use case: it focuses on hidden waste in the equity incentive capital stack of large listed companies, making it especially relevant for businesses with complex equity incentive plans, trust holdings, and hedging arrangements. Its unified view and continuous monitoring logic could potentially replace fragmented spreadsheets and adviser reports. The main drawback is the limited public information available: there are no customer cases, implementation details, data source explanations, system integration notes, permission and compliance information, or pricing transparency, so buyers would need to conduct thorough due diligence before procurement.

Who it is for and access from China

It is best suited to finance, treasury, governance, and compensation-related teams at large UK listed companies. The website provides no evidence that it is applicable to non-FTSE companies or mainland Chinese businesses. Access from China is unknown, and payment methods are not disclosed. If Chinese companies need similar capabilities, local financial modeling, equity incentive management, treasury management, or capital markets advisory solutions may typically be considered as alternatives.