Key person insurance solutions right now: Premium Equalisation: Shareholder Protection Premium Equalisation is an essential aspect of business trust policies. When a group of shareholders decides to take out an own life policy individually, they may need to equalize the premiums paid. This is done to prevent HMRC from considering unequal premiums as a “gift” or “wealth transfer” from those who are paying more to those who are paying less. If HMRC views this as a gift, there could be inheritance tax implications if there is ever a claim. Discover extra info on relevant life insurance with critical illness cover.
When it comes to choosing the right amount of cover for a business, there are multiple types of insurance that need to be considered. Depending on the particular circumstances of the business, an effective cover plan could include multiple of profits insurance, allowing businesses to protect their profits if anything unexpected was to happen. Alternatively, multiple of salary would help to cover additional costs such as recruitment and replacement in the case of an employee leaving. Loan security is another key type of insurance which can ensure that any outstanding loan payments are managed and paid off should anything go wrong.
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.
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.
Often called key-man insurance this type of policy is sometimes miss understood. It is important to ensure that the policy is set up in the correct manner using the right trusts or structure. There are also a lot of confusion and miss information on the tax treatment of these policies. The policy can be for life only or for life and critical illness cover . In another article we also explore key person income protection insurance. The death or illness of a key employee can have devastating consequences for a business and thus protecting a business from this should be an important part of protecting a business if the financial impact and help the business survive a difficult time. Read more info at https://advice4directors.co.uk/.
Key Person Life Insurance: How would your business cope with the loss of a key person? We help protect your business from the death of its key people. Shareholder Protection Insurance: The death of illness of a minor or major shareholder can lead to massive business problems. Help give shareholder dependents a fair sale price of shares and help remaining shareholders retain the business shared with these important policies.