About Business Life Insurance

What this site is

Business Life Insurance explains how life insurance can serve as a funding mechanism in business planning: for business continuity, ownership transitions, the loss of a key person, buy-sell obligations, executive benefits, qualified-plan arrangements, business debt and succession. Insurance is treated as one part of a broader business strategy, not the strategy by itself.

Who it is written for

Business owners, partners and shareholders, closely held companies, professional practices, and the executives and key employees a business depends on.

What it covers

• Key person insurance
• Buy-sell agreement funding, including cross-purchase and entity-purchase structures
• Business succession
• Executive bonus arrangements (often called "Section 162" plans, an industry term rather than a type of qualified plan)
• Split-dollar life insurance, and corporate-owned and employer-owned life insurance
• Fully insured §412(e)(3) defined benefit plans, formerly known as "412(i)" plans
• Life insurance connected with business loans
• How these strategies apply to particular professions and types of business

Four planning tools go with the guides: three show the arithmetic behind common funding questions, and an educational estimator lists the statutory conditions for a §412(e)(3) plan without calculating anything. Each tool states its assumptions and limitations.

What it is not

Everything on this site is general, educational information. It is not tax, legal, investment, actuarial or insurance advice, and it does not recommend a policy, a product or a strategy for any business. No page or tool is a quote. This site does not name an advisor, author or reviewer, and no page is presented as reviewed by a licensed professional. How pages are researched and checked is described in the editorial standards.

Where a page cites a government source, such as the IRS, the U.S. Treasury, the Department of Labor or the SBA, the citation does not mean that body endorses this site.

Contact

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