Protection

Protection planning starts with establishing what you are trying to accomplish through a comprehensive financial planning process. Protection planning for individuals and business owners typically involves the determination to whether you are properly insured in the case of a death, disability and/or illness, or incurring an unforeseen financial obligation due to property damage or litigation. When evaluating risk for an individual or a business owner, your choice is to self insure the risk, transfer risk to an insurance company, or some combination of the two. The answer is not always clear as to what level or structure of protection is appropriate for your circumstances. The amount of coverage needed will also likely change over time as your financial circumstances change. New policy features, benefits, and pricing also will change so your overall insurance strategies and products should be re-evaluated periodically.

Through a financial appraisal of your assets and an educational approach, we suggest the appropriate amount of cash reserves a client should maintain and then determine whether a client is over or under insured. Then we evaluate your current insurance coverage and determine if the coverage is meeting expectations at an appropriate cost. If additional insurance is needed or changes to existing coverage is prudent, we will help a client evaluate the insurance marketplace by seeking offers from multiple well rated insurance carriers. We advise individuals and business owner clients on the implementation of insurance strategies in the areas of:

• Life Insurance
  
• Disability Insurance
  
• Long Term Care Insurance
  
• Property and Casualty and General Liability Insurance
  
• We also advise clients on more sophisticated insurance strategies for business

owners and high net worth individuals such as:

• Estate liquidity strategies as a part of an estate plan for real estate owners
  
• Wealth transfer strategies as a part of an estate plan
  
• Considering life insurance as an asset class as part of an overall portfolio
  
• Asset replacement as a part of an estate and/or charitable giving plan
  
• Pension survivorship evaluations using life insurance
  
• Non-qualified retirement plan and transition strategies for business owners
  
• Key person insurance strategies for business owners
  
• Funding buy – sell agreements for business owner continuation strategies
  
• Life settlement strategies that could be examined for those who may consider lapsing their existing life insurance coverage during their retirement years.
  

We help clients evaluate the features and benefits of annuities, along with the associated costs of annuity products including:

• Immediate income annuities
  
• Fixed annuities
  
• Equity indexed annuities
  
• Variable annuities
  
• Variable annuities with guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefits

If you would like to learn more about any of these protection strategies and how they may apply to your financial goals, we are pleased to offer a complimentary initial consultation. In this meeting, we can learn more about what you or your business is trying to protect, and you can learn more how we could implement various protection strategies that could help you avoid common financial roadblocks. You may also benefit from a check up on any existing insurance policies that you already own to evaluate whether your policy is still competitive and accomplishing the goals that you intended when you bought the policy.