Key person insurance services today
Relevant life policy financial products with advice4directors.co.uk: Business Loan Insurance: Many businesses borrow to grow or invest in expensive machinery or premises. On the death of a director banks often get worried and cancel overdrafts or call in loans. Business loan insurance protects your business from this issue. Executive Income Protection Insurance: In the event of a long term or permanent illness where a director cannot work anymore then paying their wages can become a burden on the business. Executive income protection give the company the required funds to ensure the director can still be remunerated. Discover even more information at Key Person Income Protection Insurance .
Who can have Key Person Insurance: Any business looking to protect their business from, life cover, terminal illness, critical illness cover (covering illnesses such as heart attack, stroke, cancer). As will as the typical limited company businesses key person cover can benefit sole traders and partnerships. As mentioned above it is important to get the right level of cover, set up in the most tax efficient manner to give peace of mind, protect the business profits and reduce business risk from the loss of a valuable employee. It gives a much needed cash injection to give cash flow by means of a lump sum payment.
How Much Cover is Needed? When it comes to the amount of cover you need, it is important to reflect the amount that would be needed to pay the debt or loan back in full. To ensure you have the right level of protection, there are two main types of business loan protection insurance available; level and decreasing. Level protection is suitable if your debts stay at a consistent level over a set period, such as with an interest only mortgage. Decreasing protection allows you to address your liabilities in smaller amounts which makes more sense when responding to repayments on longer-term loans such as car finance. Business loan protection can provide significant support during a financially challenging time, allowing the continuity of trading while deferring payments on those outstanding debts. It’s vital that all businesses review their current debt levels regularly and consider the implications if one or more were suddenly unable to be paid off quickly, before selecting an appropriate level of loan protection insurance.
How the policies should be set up: There are various ways in which shareholder protection can be taken out and set up. We work closely with your accountant and other professional connections to ensure the cover is setup in the correct way for your business. In order to protect individual shareholders, it is recommended that each shareholder takes out a separate “own life” policy. This policy will insure them for a sum assured equivalent to the value of their company shares. By taking out this coverage, the shareholder can rest assured knowing that if something were to happen, their investment in the company would be protected. Additionally, if they choose to write this policy into trust, they can benefit their co-shareholders in case of unforeseeable events.
Family Benefits: If for example one of the shareholders owned 33% of a business and they were to die. To make things simple lets value the business at £3,000,000 and lets say their shares are worth £1,000,000. The spouse would normally be the one who would inherit the shares. But the remaining shareholders usually would not have spare £1 million as a cash lump sum freely available. So the chances are that they might offer the spouse a smaller sum than the shares are worth. Or another option is that the spouse could sell the shares to someone else potentially a competitor. Another option would be that the spouse could potentially keep the shares and get involves in the business. But usually the spouse would have other commitments and would not want to get involved in the business.
When an individual or couple take out a mortgage then in most cases they will protect their mortgage with life insurance or life and critical illness. The same principle should apply for business that have loans, overdrafts or other type of commercial loans. However many business owners overlook and forget to cover any outstanding loans. Business loan protection is very similar to key person cover but rather than the sum assured amount covering the loss of income from the death of a key employee instead it covers outstanding debts.
How much cover to Have? Key person insurance is designed to help protect businesses from the loss of a key individual in the event of death, illness or injury. Calculating how much key person insurance to purchase may seem daunting at first glance, but it can be done if you understand the different quoting methods and calculations used by insurers. It’s important to consider other types of insurance too, depending on the individual needs. For example, businesses in their start-up stages may want to invest in both recruitment cost and business start-up coverage. This will provide extra protection and enable them to get back up and running quickly should something unexpectedly occur during this foundation period of trading. In addition, there are more specialist forms of insurance such as cyber liability or legal defense that can help protect your business from anyone making a claim against you if things don’t entirely go according to plan. Discover additional details on Business Protection Insurance.