By: Joel McKinnon
As an insurance professional it is our job to make sure you, our clients have the proper protection you need to protect your family, your assets and your future. Most generally we as agents do this through providing you with auto, home & business insurance coverages.
That being said there tends to be a “gap” in most of the households & businesses we review. Of course you have the occasional need to increase dwelling coverage, or auto liability limits but where we see families unprotected time and time again is on the life insurance side of things. We work our entire life to provide our families with a nice home, nice cars, fun “toys” yet we tend to forget to cover the one thing that allows all of that to happen US. If your family lost you most generally they would also lose their way of life. Most of the families we meet with depend on dual incomes to run their lift style, to pay for their bills, and to put food on their tables, yet most don’t spend the $20 – $30 a month for life insurance. Instead we spend that money on cell phones, tablets, coffee, soda, tobacco and other tehcy gadgets that in 6-12 months will generally still hold no value to us, and we will have moved onto something else all while leaving our family open to major issues down the road should you our your spouse die.
As small business owners this also applies to us – Most of us have 1-2 KEY EMPLOYEES in our business that help us to run the day to day operations, heck in some instances they run the business. As business owners what are you doing to protect the future of your business should something happen to that key employee? Just as you are a key “employee” to your family providing the cash needed to run that operation, your employees are the key to your business and the future of it. As business owners we need to make sure we are taking the time to evaluate our position, to make sure we are protecting the future of our business not only against fire, and theft, and liability law suites, but also against the death of a key employee
This week I came across an article I would like to share with you, and you can get to this article by clicking HERE – but below I would like to share and point out a few key paragraphs. Please, for your sake take the time to protect your family, and your business should something happen to you or to a key “employee.”
- According to a National Association of Insurance Commissioners survey, seven in 10 small businesses reported being “very dependent” on a few key employees, yet only 22 percent of the companies had insurance policies that would deliver money in the event that a key employee died or was disabled
- To be blunt, you are nuts if your business doesn’t carry key-person insurance on you or on any other integral member of your team.
- Every company is different. But if you’re healthy, it’s probably worth going right to $1 million, because that will require you to go through the burden of a complete health screening, which is a good thing for you and your investors anyway. You can also add in disability coverage. Stick with a guaranteed term policy; the premium doesn’t change from year to year.