Advanced Insurance Planning Strategies

• Buy-Sell: Most business owners have two key concerns
• Ensure orderly (and profitable) disposition of the business in the event of death, disability or retirement
• To help ensure the orderly disposition of a business interest, the owners must enter into and fund an appropriate agreement which:
• Establishes a ready market for the business in the event of death, disability or retirement
• Sets a fair price for the business interest and may also fix the value for estate tax purposes
• Provides the funds needed to carry out the owner’s obligations upon the death of one of the owners
• Optimize tax-favored retirement income programs that may be available to them
• To help ensure both buy-sell funding and retirement income, a program can:
• Use the same program that is funding the buy-sell agreement to provide a personal retirement strategy
• Select the timing and amounts of premium payments funding the program
• Control the investment of the program values among sub-accounts
• Receive all distributions for retirement purposes on a tax-favorable basis

• Estate Preservation: Your hard work and determination to succeed have enabled you to accumulate a substantial estate. The challenge is to formulate and implement an estate insurance plan that will accomplish the following objectives:
• Transfer the assets in your estate to your family in the manner you deem appropriate.
• Pay the least possible amount of Federal estate taxes and other estate settlement costs.
• Maximize the amount your family receives at your death.

• Retirement Strategies:
• Key Person: Most successful business owners are looking for ways to maximize retirement benefits for themselves and their key executive. The ideal program would allow the business owner to:
• Use corporate dollars to provide personal retirement benefits
• Pick and choose those who can participate
• Select the level and type of benefits for each eligible executive
• Impose “golden handcuffs” to retain the most valued executives
• Avoid cumbersome IRS and ERISA compliance requirements
• Protect most plan assets from the claims of executive’s creditors
• Recover all corporate costs on an income tax-free basis with possible tax-free gain to surplus
• 401(k): The most popular of all types of defined contribution plans, it permits employees to defer a portion of compensation on a pretax basis. Employers may elect to make additional contributions to the plan on behalf of employees on either a matching or non-matching basis.