Protect your profits by protecting your people
Take away my people, but leave my factories, and soon grass will grow on the factory floors. Take away my factories, but leave my people, and soon we will have a new and better factory - Andrew Carnegie
The loss of a key person could have disastrous consequences for the business if there’s no key person cover in place.
Areas where business continuity is at risk include:
Repay Directors Loan
Many businesses have directors loan accounts. These can be of substantial value either through personal cash injections into the business or through leaving salary, bonuses or dividends in the business. Do you know that these are generally repayable on demand. If the individual dies, their estate will be required to request the loan is repaid to them. Does your business have the funds available to do this?
Loss of profits
The loss of a key individual in a business to sickness or death can lead to a negative impact on profitability. The business may have lost important personal and business contacts along with the loss of detailed knowledge of the business’s processes and systems. The individual may take time to replace and the cost of recruitment and training means the financial impact may last for some time.
Business loans
Many businesses have loans to help aid their cashflow and growth and these can often be the key to succeeding. The loss of a key director may impact profitability but the loans will still need to be repaid. The lender may have also insisted that there is a second charge in place on each directors residential property and they are unlikely to remove these on a deceased directors estate unless the full loan is repaid.
Why Advice is so Important?
There are different ways of setting up business continuation cover depending on the structure of the business and whether the individual is an owner.
The Business Protection Experts will help you to initially assess the risks you face in your business should you lose a director, shareholder or employee and the impact this will have on both profitability and cashflow.
We will discuss the level and type of cover required and the best way to set it up.
We will also look at the reason for the cover and how it would be best structured in regards to taxation. We will liaise as required with your accountant to ensure the advice we give is of the highest quality.
People are the most important asset in your business. We help you to understand the impact the loss of a key individual will have. Call us on 01934 251822 to arrange an appointment.