Shareholder protection insurance financial products right now: Relevant Life Policy: A highly tax efficient way of offering life cover for company directors. Can now also cover illnesses with the optional employee significant illness cover. Written in trust to ensure tax free payouts. Key Person Income Protection Insurance: Long term illness of a key person can affect both the income of a business and also in many cases the employee also needs paying. Key person income protection can cover the business for loss of income whilst the employee is not working. Discover extra info at https://advice4directors.co.uk/key-person-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.
When a business loan is taken out, it must be done so with the understanding that there will be a responsible party for paying back the money borrowed. Business loan protection insurance is usually taken out on the individual or group of individuals responsible for repayment of the loan. The purpose of this type of insurance is to provide a level of security and assurance should something unexpected happen to one or more of the shareholders involved in the loan. This could include death, disability, or critical illness – all of which might otherwise leave the company in financial difficulty.
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.
Tax Implications: This form of succession planning is quite complex and you should seek financial advice, legal advice, tax advice and bespoke advice unique to your own situation so the guidelines below will just give a brief overview of what company owners need to watch out for. So it will be very likely that the spouse could not sell the shares at all or sell them at a massively discounted price. With a shareholder protection policy in place it would provide a lump sum payment to the remaining shareholders. The sum assured would be pre-agreed by the business owners. This would allow the individual shareholders to buy the spouses company shares at fair price.
Insurance provides peace of mind to businesses that their investment will remain secure even if something unforeseen were to occur in regards to any important employees involved in the company’s operations. So should these employees become scarce due to critical illness or death, such policies can provide much-needed financial aid by paying an outstanding loan amount in full – something that would otherwise not be possible. As such, taking out an insurance policy when any major loans have been secured can act as both a form of protection for companies and for the individuals associated with them too.
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 more info at https://advice4directors.co.uk/.