In a reaction to the Volkskrant, Van Lanschot Kempen said that it asked remuneration expert Willis Towers Watson to daw up a "careful benchmark". "This benchmark is a useful comparison, also taking into account that Van Lanschot Kempen operates in a highly competitive international market", the bank said. According to the bank, the "successful transformation to a specialized asset manager, with good to very good financial results" was the main reason for increasing the executives' salaries. Van Lanschot Kempen added that the salaries hardly increased over the past years, and that the proposed new salaries are still considerably lower than the average of the group of companies used in the benchmark.