The features of life insurance go beyond just financial ones. As a business owner, investing in life insurance can be a strategic move that can help advance your entrepreneurial objectives. You can use it to insure key employees, incentivize high-performing staff, fund buy-sell agreements, and manage estate equalization. Thus, it may be advantageous to get a life insurance product for your business.

There are four key ways that business owners can use life insurance. Let’s break down each one:

Insure Key Employees

If your business relies on a particular employee for critical tasks–whose absence would greatly impact your company’s operations and productivity–it may be good to insure them with a life insurance product. This way, if something happens to that staff member, you may be able to use their death benefit to help support your business during the transition period of finding and training a new employee.

Incentivize High-Performing Staff

Providing rewards is an effective way to motivate and retain valuable employees. With this strategy, you can give high-performing staff life insurance as a bonus or a benefit of continued employment. This shows that you appreciate the value that your employee gives the company, so you’re willing to support them for the long term.

Fund Buyout Agreements

Life insurance can be used to protect a business if one of the owners dies. With a buy-sell life insurance product, the death benefit can be used to fund buyout transactions. This way, the deceased owner’s stake goes to the surviving partner, helping prevent their family‒who may show no interest in the company‒from staying involved in the business.

Life insurance can be used to protect a business if one of the owners dies. With a buy-sell life insurance product, the death benefit can be used to fund buyout transactions. This way, the deceased owner’s stake goes to the surviving partner, helping prevent their family‒who may show no interest in the company‒from staying involved in the business.

Buy-sell transactions can go many ways. In some instances, the proceeds of the life insurance product may be used to redeem shares or pay a capital dividend to fund a purchase of shares from the deceased’s estate.

Equalize Estates

If you own a family business and would like to pass it along to multiple beneficiaries or a single family member without leaving your other dependents in the dark, you may benefit from life insurance for business owners. You can help ensure that everyone gets their fair share through estate equalization.

With estate equalization, you take out a life insurance policy worth the value of your business, and then name other dependents‒apart from the family members inheriting the business‒as beneficiaries. This estate equalization strategy helps ensure financial security and proper turnover of assets.

There are several life insurance products available for business owners.

Whole life insurance and universal life insurance are two types of products that provide coverage for a lifetime while allowing policyholders to grow a cash value component that they can loan or withdraw, subject to policy terms, conditions and limitations, while they’re still alive for business expenses and other related costs.

We feel getting life insurance for your business is just as important as getting an individual life insurance product, like life insurance for a stay-at-home mom . It’s a smart strategy that can help keep your business operating and profitable in case a key player in your company passes away unexpectedly.

Also, check out our article: Term Life Insurance for Married Couples.