Insurance Planning
If there’s one thing certain about life – it’s the uncertainty that living it brings. The best laid plans can sometimes come to naught! Even though you may think you’ve covered all the bases, life sometimes has a funny way of throwing you a curveball when you least expect it. Luckily, while you can strive your best to plan wisely and thoroughly, you can also hedge your bets against the unintended through prudent Insurance Planning.
Why Insurance Planning Is Important
Without proper planning, be it Investment Planning, Retirement Planning, or Estate Planning, you’ll likely not invest successfully, retire comfortably, or leave a meaningful legacy for your beneficiaries. And without a well-thought-out Insurance Plan, every one of those facets of a financial plan could be exposed to unforeseen risks.
Good planning helps you identify and plan for all the risks involved in every aspect of your financial life. Thoughtful Insurance Planning helps mitigate the risks you can’t foresee or those that you are unable to plan around!
What We Can Do for You
They say that some things are better to have BEFORE the need is felt – even if they are NEVER ever used. Insurance is one of those things. Rather than seeing insurance as an “expense”, most people experience it as peace of mind. That’s the essence of our Insurance Planning service.
Our Insurance Planning service covers:
- Comprehensive Review: We’ll review existing plans, if you have them, to ensure they continue to fit your needs. But if you don’t have an insurance plan, we’re here to advise and guide you on which plans make best sense for you and your family.
- Home, Car and other asset insurance: It is our belief that you shouldn’t over-insure, but you should never un-insure or under-insure either. The type (and value) of your home, car and other assets will determine what insurance, and how much of it, you should buy.
- Death-event security: If you have people that depend upon you being around for many years to come, like your spouse/partner, minor children, aged parents, we’ll advise on what life insurance policies best meet your needs.
- Retirement income through annuities: Sometimes, the best way to guarantee retirement income is the simplest – Annuities. Of course, these products vary in terms and pay-out options and conditions. Our experts will help make sense of it all!
- Critical illness protection: You may be in the best of health now, but illness has a way of sneaking up on the fittest amongst us. Let us help you determine if you need to insure against a critical illness and, if so, under what terms.
- Disability and long-term care protection: Accidents, at home, at work, during your commute, can leave you severely disabled and financially stressed. As can debilitating illness! We’ll help you insure against such unexpected turn of events.
- Travel insurance: Sometimes, even the safest of travel plans can turn into nightmares. Whether it’s an illness or accident overseas, a missed flight, lost baggage or natural disasters that interrupt your plans – if you are insured, you’ll likely be less stressed about dealing with the consequences.
- Health, dental and wellness insurance: With family and personal medical care becoming more expensive by the day, it may be prudent to cover yourself and your family through appropriate health insurance plans.
- Funding children’s education: Even though your children are of tender age, sometimes insuring their lives may make good sense in the long-term, especially in helping to pay for college or university. Paying just a few hundred dollars a month in premiums now, could result in a windfall payment by the time your child is of college or university-going age. We’ll help you decide if this is a good option for you by doing the math!
- Insuring estate and succession plans: When structured correctly, insurance can be a great estate planning tool as well, especially when it comes to shielding your beneficiaries from paying taxes or fees on their inheritance. Partners in business may also use insurance policies as a great financial tool to aid in succession planning. We’ll help you structure an insurance plan that makes sense for your needs.
Why Life Insurance Planning Is Important
Death benefits pay-out for survivors is only one aspect of life insurance. If the policy holder passes, the cash value of the policy can help young families meet their financial needs, or can even help pay off a mortgage. However, there are other facets of life insurance that are equally important.
Most life insurance products allow policy holders to tap into funds as the value of their policy grows over time. In case you are looking for tax-deferred gains, a life insurance policy offers that too, because you are only taxed once you withdraw the money from your policy. With the right life insurance planning strategy in place, your policy can act as a great source of tax-free wealth transfer to your beneficiaries.
In retirement, a well-planned life insurance strategy can serve to generate additional retirement income, or it might even provide additional living health care benefits in your old-age.
What We Can Do for You
Not every life insurance policy provides you all of these benefits. We will discuss your needs in detail, and then customize a life insurance plan that meets those specific goals.
Some of the life insurance planning tools include:
Term Life Insurance: If you have a specific time-horizon over which you need protection, then Term Life Insurance policies are definitely worth considering. These policies are designed to provide short to intermediate term coverage at an affordable cost. For instance, if you have young children whom you wish to provide for until they are older – say 15 to 20 years – or if you have an unpaid mortgage that you want your family to pay off in the event of your untimely passing, then a Term Life policy is worth considering.
Permanent Life Insurance: Permanent life policies not only provide insurance protection for life, but are also a great way to grow the value of your policy. The enhanced cash value might then be tapped subsequently, to meet future needs, such as funding college/university education of a child, or creating an additional retirement income stream.
Participating (or Whole) Life Insurance: Depending on what your investment goals are, our insurance advisory team might recommend a Participating Life Insurance product for you. With these products, the cash value and death benefit payout of your policy can experience tax-advantaged growth within the policy. You might also be eligible to borrow tax-free funds (for any purpose you might deem fit) against the cash value of your policy.
Universal Life Insurance: If you are in search of higher savings and earnings potential from your life insurance policy, then a Universal Life Insurance might be what our advisers recommend. These policies also offer great flexibility, as the amount insured can be changed, and premiums can be adjusted (increased, deferred, decreased), while enabling policy-holders to also withdraw part of the cash value.
Variable Life Insurance: If you are someone looking to leverage stock market performance through your insurance policy, then a Variable Life Insurance product might be what you need. They provide policy-holders the option to invest their cash value in a host of insurer-recommended stocks, bonds, money-market funds and other investment products. Our insurance specialists will make you aware of the all the risks and opportunities associated with a variable insurance product.
*The cost and availability of life insurance depend on factors such as age, health, and the type and amount of insurance purchased. Before implementing a strategy involving life insurance, it would be prudent to make sure that you are insurable by having the policy approved. As with most financial decisions, there are expenses associated with the purchase of life insurance. Policies commonly have mortality and expense charges. In addition, if a policy is surrendered prematurely, there may be surrender charges and income tax implications.