Business Insurance

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Key person Insurance

How Does Key Person Insurance Work?

Key person insurance is also another important business protection insurance service and can also be known as key employees insurance, key man insurance or key person protection and forms a major part of your business protection insurance. It is designed to protect businesses against financial loss when someone who is essential to the company’s operation dies or becomes unable to work due to ill health.

The insurance will pay out a cash sum on the death of the named key person, as the loss of this key person would have a financial impact on the company. Some providers may offer this on a critical illness basis too.

The business owners take out key person insurance on the key employee. The business pays for the premiums and is the beneficiary of the insurance in the event of a claim being made. If the insured employee dies within the term (or is diagnosed with a critical illness if this is also insured), the company will receive the payout.

Why Do I Need Key Person Insurance?

Your business success requires your stakeholders’ confidence, from customers to suppliers, bank managers, and employees, so losing a key person will often significantly impact that level of confidence. The benefit of receiving an injection of cash from key person cover into your business can help it to survive short term giving owners time to take steps to maintain confidence from your clients in the longer term.

Who Is A Key Person?

So who are the key people in your business? This decision is down to you as a business, and only you can decide if a person is key to the running or performance of your business. It could be a person who brings large revenue streams into your business, is integral to the profile of your business, or is a key decision-maker behind the scenes. If this person’s absence death or critical illness affects your business needs and operation, they can be covered by key person insurance.

Small business owners are far more likely to have one or two significantly important people who the business relies on to succeed. Key man insurance is often overlooked by small businesses who tend to need it most, as loss of a key person would significantly disrupt the business proceeds.

For example, small businesses are more likely to have an involved founder, without whom ideas and crucial leadership would be lost. The loss of such a person could damage the ethos of a young business that may not have the resilience to sustain the blow, without a financial boost of this form of business protection insurance, to help cushion the way to safe, profitable ground.

Key man insurance provides assistance to get a business through a period of uncertainty in the aftermath of unexpectedly losing a key member of staff. It may only be money, but that money could ensure your business can continue to operate following the loss of an important member of the team, which would include one of the business owners.

Key people inside a business might include:

The founder: you, or the person who devised the business and got things off the ground in the first place.

Office manager: crucial in running the day-to-day operations

Technology guru: if you rely on a website to drive sales to your business, without your developer your business could lose its main route to profitable business opportunities

Top salesperson: if there’s one person the business relies on to bring the business through the door and make it stick, this person is key to the profits of the business

Shareholder Protection

WHAT IS SHAREHOLDER PROTECTION?

Another very important business protection insurance aspect where each individual shareholder can take out separate life cover for themselves. This ensures them of a cash sum equivalent to the value of their company shares. They can write this into trust to benefit their co-shareholders as the beneficiaries.

Shareholder protection allows business owners to buy shares back from any partner who is diagnosed with a critical or terminal illness, or in the event of death. This helps surviving owners stay in control and minimises disruption to the business.

Why Shareholder Protection Matters

Dealing with ownership in a company can be difficult in the event of an untimely death or illness.

A shareholder arrangement sets out how the shares should be valued and gives the surviving shareholders the right to buy the shares, or the outgoing shareholder the right to sell.

Dealing with the loss of company directors or key shareholders in any business can be very traumatic, even more so with added disputes on how the company might carry on. If an owner passes away without shareholder protection in place then that owners shares would pass to their estate. The insurance protects a business owner and their investment in their company and pays a lump sum to their beneficiaries whilst ensuring the remaining shareholders can keep control of their business.

Any life cover you set up must be aligned with the Articles of Association and the shareholders’ agreement. There may also need to be a trust and/or buyback document in place, for them to be effective.

Setting Up Shareholder Protection

Each individual shareholder can take out separate cover for themselves (known as an ‘own life’ policy). This insures them for a sum assured equivalent to the value of their company shares. If they choose to, they can write this into trust to benefit their co-shareholders.

You may also need your shareholding clients to enter into an explicit agreement that if one of them dies, the remaining shareholders can buy their shares from their personal representatives.

They can also agree that if one of them suffers a critical illness, the affected shareholder can choose to sell their share. If they decide to do this, the remaining shareholders must buy it.

Any policies you set up must be aligned with the articles of association and the shareholders’ agreement. There may also need to be a trust and/or buyback document in place, for them to be effective.

Relevant Life Insurance

RELEVANT LIFE INSURANCE

Relevant life insurance is individual life insurance designed to replicate death in service for a single employee where there are not enough members to warrant a group life insurance scheme. The life insurance is owned by the business.

What Is Relevant Life Cover?

Like a standard life insurance policy, these products pay out a lump sum to the insured person’s beneficiaries on the death of the insured.

How Does It Work?

The amount a life policy pays out is based on the multiple of the employee’s salary. It will be the businesses decision how much the life policy will be and will pay out on death or terminal illness. An insurance advisor will be able to guide.

Some plans, known as ‘level’ life policies, are for a set lump sum amount agreed when the insurance was purchased while others are linked to inflation. It is also possible to have guaranteed increases of life cover written into the terms, to cover larger mortgages or pay rises in the result of death.

Relevant life insurance policies are not treated as a benefit in kind, so no income tax is payable, nor are they subject to inheritance tax. Adding to their tax efficiency, businesses can also declare the premiums as a business expense to lower their corporation tax bill.

Who Can Have Relevant Life Cover?

You can apply for relevant life insurance cover for one or more of your employees if they are.

Sole traders
A Shareholder Partnership
A limited liability Partnership
A limited Company
A charity Organisation

The following generally cannot be covered by a relevant life insurance policy…

Employees can only be insured with relevant life cover if they work for the business in a PAYE capacity and are UK residents.