Employee Stock Ownership Plan

12 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2020

Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), Shares in ESOP [Abstract]

EMPLOYEE STOCK OWNERSHIP PLAN

The ESOP trust acquired 3,024,574 shares (6,846,728 shares post-corporate reorganization) of common stock in the Company's initial public offering and 4,726,000 shares of common stock in the Company's corporate reorganization in December of 2010. Both acquisitions of common stock were made with proceeds from loans from the Company, secured by shares of the Company's stock purchased in each offering. The Bank has agreed to make cash contributions to the ESOP trust on an annual basis sufficient to enable the ESOP trust to make the required annual loan payments to the Company on September 30 of each year. The loan for the shares acquired in the initial public offering matured on September 30, 2013. The loan for the shares acquired in the corporate reorganization matures on September 30, 2040.

As annual loan payments are made on each September 30th, shares are released from collateral and allocated to qualified employees based on the proportion of their qualifying compensation to total qualifying compensation. On September 30, 2020, 165,198 shares were released from collateral. On September 30, 2021, 165,198 shares will be released from collateral. As ESOP shares are committed to be released from collateral, the Company records compensation expense. Dividends on unallocated ESOP shares are applied to the debt service payments of the loan secured by the unallocated shares. Dividends on unallocated ESOP shares in excess of the debt service payment are recorded as compensation expense and distributed to participants or participants' ESOP accounts. Compensation expense related to the ESOP was $2.0 million for the year ended September 30, 2020, $3.1 million for the year ended September 30, 2019, and $2.9 million for the year ended September 30, 2018. Of these amounts, $336 thousand, $549 thousand, and $541 thousand related to the difference between the market price of the Company's stock when the shares were acquired by the ESOP trust and the average market price of the Company's stock during the years ended September 30, 2020, 2019, and 2018, respectively. The amount included in compensation expense for dividends on unallocated ESOP shares in excess of the debt service payments was zero for the year ended September 30, 2020, and $906 thousand and $688 thousand for the years ended September 30, 2019 and 2018, respectively.

Shares may be withdrawn from the ESOP trust due to diversification (a participant may begin to diversify at least 25% of their ESOP shares at age 50), retirement, termination, or death of the participant. The following is a summary of shares held in the ESOP trust as of September 30, 2020 and 2019:


	2020		2019
	(Dollars in thousands)
Allocated ESOP shares	4,200,964		4,207,520
Unreleased ESOP shares	3,303,960		3,469,158
Total ESOP shares	7,504,924		7,676,678

Fair value of unreleased ESOP shares	$	30,628	$	47,805