Why would an owner need coverage beyond the group plan?

Because group maximums are set for an average salary. A group LTD plan replacing 66.7% of income to a monthly maximum can amount to a small fraction of an owner’s actual income, and group definitions of disability are frequently less favourable than individual ones. The people with the most at stake are routinely the least well covered in the building.

What happens if a shareholder dies without buy-sell funding?

The agreement usually still obliges the surviving shareholders to purchase the interest — without giving them the cash to do it. In practice that means borrowing at a bad moment, selling assets, or ending up in business with an estate that never wanted to be there. Insurance funding exists to make the agreement executable on the day it is needed.

Do you work with our accountant?

Always, and we prefer to. Owner-level planning touches corporate structure, the capital dividend account, shareholder agreements and personal tax — none of which we advise on. Our job is to bring the insurance analysis into a room that already contains your accountant and your lawyer. Recommendations built around those advisors rather than past them are the ones that hold up.

Solutions

Executive & Owner Benefits

Group plans are built for the average employee. The people whose departure would change the business are, almost by definition, not average — and standard maximums leave them the most underinsured people in the company.

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What it actually is

For the people whose departure would change the business.

Coverage layered on top of the group plan for owners, executives and key people: individual disability that fills the gap group maximums leave, life insurance funding a shareholder agreement, key-person coverage protecting the business itself, and Health Spending Accounts structured for owner-managers. All of it belongs in the same conversation as your corporate structure, not beside it.

What you get: Continuity planning that survives a bad phone call.

Coverage

What sits inside this benefit

Each of these is a decision, not a default. Most plans inherit them from a template and never revisit them.

Individual disability

Group LTD maximums cap out well below what a high earner actually needs, and group definitions are often less favourable. Individual coverage tops up the amount and can lock in stronger, non-cancellable wording.

Key-person insurance

The business is the beneficiary. It funds the disruption of losing someone whose knowledge, relationships or licence the operation depends on — recruitment, lost revenue, lender confidence.

Buy-sell and shareholder agreement funding

Insurance that gives surviving shareholders the liquidity to buy a departing shareholder’s interest, at a valuation the agreement already sets. Without funding, a well-drafted agreement is an intention rather than a plan.

Owner-manager Health Spending Account

For incorporated owners, a properly structured HSA converts personal medical spending into a deductible business expense. The structure has to be right, which means involving your accountant.

Corporately owned life insurance

Used for estate liquidity, capital dividend account planning and long-term tax efficiency. Genuinely powerful and genuinely easy to get wrong without coordinated tax advice.

Where the money moves

The levers we actually pull

Check what the group plan actually pays a high earner after maximums and offsets — it is usually a far lower percentage of income than the headline suggests.
Read the shareholder agreement before designing the funding, not after. Insurance that does not match the agreement’s mechanics creates a problem rather than solving one.
Confirm the non-evidence maximum covers the people you most need covered.
Coordinate with the accountant and the lawyer from the start. Recommendations built in isolation tend not to survive their review, and rightly so.

What drives the cost

Individually underwritten and priced on age, health, occupation and amount. The relevant comparison is not the premium — it is what the business would actually absorb if the person were gone for two years or permanently.

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Straight answers

Questions employers actually ask us

No hedging. If the honest answer is “you do not need us for that,” that is the answer you will get.

Ask us something else

: Because group maximums are set for an average salary. A group LTD plan replacing 66.7% of income to a monthly maximum can amount to a small fraction of an owner’s actual income, and group definitions of disability are frequently less favourable than individual ones. The people with the most at stake are routinely the least well covered in the building.
: The agreement usually still obliges the surviving shareholders to purchase the interest — without giving them the cash to do it. In practice that means borrowing at a bad moment, selling assets, or ending up in business with an estate that never wanted to be there. Insurance funding exists to make the agreement executable on the day it is needed.
: Always, and we prefer to. Owner-level planning touches corporate structure, the capital dividend account, shareholder agreements and personal tax — none of which we advise on. Our job is to bring the insurance analysis into a room that already contains your accountant and your lawyer. Recommendations built around those advisors rather than past them are the ones that hold up.