Personal lines · independent broker
Life insurance for business owners.
Business owners have life insurance needs most personal-lines agents miss: key-person coverage, buy-sell funding, executive bonus plans, succession planning. Different conversation than a typical term-life sale.
What it is.
Business-owner life isn't a single product — it's a stack. Key-person on the owners and irreplaceable employees, buy-sell funding tied to the operating agreement, executive bonus plans for retention, and personal coverage for the family. Each layer has different ownership, different tax treatment, and different premium structure. We coordinate with your CPA and attorney before any policy gets bound.
The lines in your policy.
Each one is its own knob. The carrier's default rarely fits a real life.
What a claim looks like.
Three anonymized files. Numbers are illustrative.
3-partner LLC, business valued at $9M ($3M each). Cross-purchase buy-sell: each partner owns $3M of 20-year term on the other two — 6 policies total. Premiums roughly $4,000–$8,000/yr per partner depending on age and health (illustrative). On any partner's death, the surviving partners receive $3M of insurance funds, use it to buy the deceased's share from the estate at the agreed valuation. Operating agreement updated alongside the insurance to require the buyout. Total annual cost: ~$15,000–$25,000 across the firm — well below the cost of an unfunded buyout via cash flow or business sale.
How to read a life policy.
The four things worth looking for on the dec page, in the order we read them.
The first page tells you who's actually covered, on what address, and under whose legal entity. A surprising number of policies have the wrong name, the wrong address, or a missing additional insured, and you don't find out until you file a claim. Cross-check it against your driver's license, your title or lease, and any contract that requires you to be insured.
Policy limits are abstract until you stack them against the assets they protect. A $300k liability limit feels generous in isolation; against a $1.2M home and a college fund, it isn't. Walk down each numbered line on your dec page and ask: if this were the cap on the worst day, would I be okay?
Page one shows you the base form. Pages four through twelve show you what the endorsements added, and, more importantly, what they took away. Water-damage exclusions, roof-payment schedules, named-storm deductibles, scheduled-valuables caps. These small numbered forms decide more claims than the headline limits do.
Carriers re-rate, re-form, and re-endorse policies at every renewal. If you keep last year's dec page, a side-by-side read takes ten minutes and tells you which limits drifted, which sublimits got cut, and which endorsements quietly disappeared. It's the single most useful habit in personal insurance.
Frequently asked questions.
Why do I need multiple policies for one business?
Each policy serves a different purpose with different ownership, beneficiary, and tax treatment. Mixing key-person, buy-sell funding, executive bonus, and personal coverage into one policy creates tax problems and structural confusion. Stack them on purpose.
Can the business deduct life insurance premiums?
Generally no — premiums paid by a business on a policy where the business is the beneficiary aren't deductible. The exception is Section 162 bonus plans where the executive owns the policy and the premium is treated as compensation. CPA coordination matters here.
How does buy-sell funding work mechanically?
Two structures. Cross-purchase: each partner owns policies on the others; on death, surviving partners use proceeds to buy out the deceased's share. Entity-purchase: business owns policies on each partner; on death, business uses proceeds to redeem the deceased's share. Both work; the right one depends on partner count and tax goals.
What's premium financing and when is it appropriate?
A bank lends the premium for a large permanent policy; the cash value collateralizes the loan. Used by very high net worth clients to acquire substantial death benefit without disrupting investment portfolios. Requires sophisticated structuring, careful interest-rate management, and ongoing review. Not appropriate for most buyers.
When should we update the buy-sell funding?
Whenever business value changes materially — new partner, sale of a division, major contract win, or roughly every 3 years for stable businesses. Coverage that hasn't been updated in 7 years is almost always under-funded.
Do you replace our existing CPA and attorney?
No. We work alongside your existing advisors. The structure work — operating agreement language, tax treatment, valuation method — is theirs. The insurance placement and ongoing review is ours. Coordination is the deliverable.
Want a second read on your life policy?
Send us your declarations page. You'll get it back marked up, in plain language, with the gaps and the over-coverage flagged, yours to keep, no obligation to switch.
or phone (913) 408-7280
We're an independent broker. We represent you, not the carrier , paid by the carrier we ultimately place with, but accountable only to the person whose name is on the policy. Read more about how we work.