Businesses as we know require many different Insurance Plans, be it:

- Public Liability
- Contents
- Professional Indemnity Insurance
- Vehicle Insurance

We appreciate the thought of hearing us suggest extra insurance on top of everything else that you already have, can seem daunting.

But with tax advantages on a lot of these policies, it's a smart way for business owners to make the insurance world work for them.

In this blog we are going to briefly touch on:

- Relevant Life Insurance
- Shareholder Protection
- Executive Income Protection
- Keyperson Cover
- Group Life Insurance, Group Critical Illness Cover and Group Income Protection

1. Relevant Life Insurance

This is one of the most popular business protection policies that we can arrange for people. It's life insurance that is arranged through and paid for by your business. The premiums can be offset against your corporation tax too, bonus!

This is like death-in-service cover for you or one of your employees, if you choose to insure them as an employment perk. It is quite common to insure yourself for 5x your annual salary to your retirement age. You can usually change it to personal life insurance if you leave the company, or the business shuts down.

2. Shareholder Protection

A lot of business owners need shareholder protection. Shareholder protection is usually life insurance or critical illness cover, and it is designed to:

- Makes it easy for shareholders to buy the shares from a critically ill shareholder, or their family if they pass away, so the business can get back to doing what it does best
- The person or their family gets a cash payout to compensate them for the shares

3. Executive Income Protection

This is an amazing product that can be arranged for you as a business owner or potentially one of your team. This insurance is designed to pay you a monthly income if you are ill and cannot work for a while, or potentially never again. It can even cover some of your pension contributions if you so wish.

There's a lot of things that you can do with income protection, and you can build it in a lot of different ways. It doesn't have to cost a silly amount of money, it's a brilliant employee retention strategy and for you it's going to help you keep to your long term financial plans.

4. Keyperson Cover

Keyperson cover is set up to benefit your business in the event of the death or critical illness of a Key Person.

This is focused on protecting the business.

Keyperson cover:

- Will pay a lump sum of money to your business if a Key Person dies or is diagnosed with a critical illness.
- It helps the company to cope with the absence of a Key Person, hopefully keep creditors at bay, pay for a replacement and their training.
- The premiums are paid for by the company and offset against corporation tax.

5. Group Protection

Group protection covers life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection.

You don't have to have them all, you can pick and choose what you like. They are something that quite a lot of people look for in an employer these days.

Here's a bit about how they work:

- Group Life Insurance - paid for by the business, premiums can be offset against corporation tax.
- Group Critical Illness Cover - paid for by the business, premiums are a benefit in kind.
- Group Income Protection - paid for by the business, premiums can be offset against corporation tax.

Group protection insurance comes with what is known as free medical underwriting, up to certain levels of cover. This basically means that everyone is insured without asking details about their medical history, travel or high-risk sports.

For life insurance this free medical underwriting limit is often a minimum £500k and for income protection a minimum £60k per year (depending upon your salary).

Critical illness cover works differently. There is free medical underwriting so you can set up the policy without any underwriting, but it will exclude claims for pre-existing conditions.

If you feel the above is worthy of consideration please get in touch with us at Merrigan-Reis, your local Bristol Insurance Adviser, based in Portishead and supporting clients throughout the UK.