Ever wondered what happens when people who are super important to a business pass away? If you’re a business owner who finds themselves worrying about this frequently, then keep reading, you may find this article useful.
Who is a Key Person?
A key person is simply someone who is crucial to a company’s ongoing financial performance because of their abilities, knowledge, experience, or leadership. They might hold many different functions or one pivotal function within a business. They could be a managing director or a star salesman.
What is Key Person Protection?
People generally accept that they need to insure their tangible business assets such as offices, factories, and equipment. What is often overlooked, however, are the human assets of a business.
Key person insurance is where a business will use a life insurance policy to insure against financial loss if one of its key people died or was critically ill.
Why is Key Person Protection worth considering?
In the event of a death or serious illness of a key person, a business could potentially face all of the below challenges.
- Replacement costs – this can include a recruitment agency fee to find a replacement and relocation costs for replacing the key person.
- Business interruption – business projects might be delayed or never completed. Important contacts and relationships might be lost with the death of a key person, and deals may fall through that they had been working on.
- Financial implications – The death of a key person could mean a significant loss of profit and revenue. The financing and securing of future lending for the company could be much more challenging, for example, if funding for the business was tied to revenue targets being achieved and the key person was responsible for achieving the revenue to hit these targets.
Understanding How Key Person Protection Works
Case Study: Software Development Enterprises
Software Development Enterprises is an IT firm in Malaysia. Eoin and Barry are the two main shareholders and directors of Software Development Enterprises. They have three staff. They are concerned as their most important staff member, Kevin, had a health scare recently and it has made them re-evaluate risks to their business.
Kevin is the head of business development in Asia and has been working for the firm for the last 15 years, joining shortly after the company was founded. If Kevin were to pass away the company’s finances could take a major hit.
Annual turnover – $5,000,000
Annual profit – $1,000,000
Kevin’s annual salary – $200,000
Kevin generates 40% of the annual profit.
Recruitment costs are expected to be 30% of the salary.
Potential Solution for Software Development Enterprises
Eoin and Barry decide to take action and take out a life insurance policy with Kevin as the life insured. Software Development Enterprises decided to take out an annual renewable policy and after calculating the costs of replacing Kevin and deciding to cover two year’s worth of lost profit they took out cover for $870,000.
Recruitment fee $200,000 @ 30% = $60,000
Relocation costs for Kevin’s replacement = $10,000
Lost profit $1,000,000 @ 40% = $400,000 * 2 years
| Amount insured | Life assured | Age of assured | Type of policy | Owner of the policy | The payer of the premiums |
| $870,000 | Kevin | 42 | Annual Renewable Term | Software Development Enterprises | Software Development Enterprises |
If you’d like to discuss this topic in more detail or would like to discuss managing personal or business risks, then please get in touch via email.
Jordan.donald@infinitysolutions.com
Financial Consultant
I work as a Financial Planner with expat clients to meet their financial planning needs and goals, with a focus on adequately protecting expats & their families, and helping people to grow their savings over the long term. I strongly believe in building meaningful and lasting relationships with clients to ensure the best client outcomes are achieved.
