Services

Owner Succession Buy/Sell

The dynamic leaders who build or grow privately held or family-owned businesses have a vision, a passion, and a lot on their plate. Daily demands can get in the way of developing an owner succession plan. FinSec Life can shoulder this responsibility for you, developing a plan tailored for your organization’s needs.

A well-crafted owner succession plan creates a framework around a career, freeing owners to pour their energy into the present. A buy-sell agreement is an important component of an owner succession plan for any business with more than one owner. An owner’s death, disability, retirement, career change, bankruptcy, or divorce are examples of the type of events that can damage or destroy a business when no buy/sell agreement is in place.

  • An Owner Succession Plan does more than provide continuity and potential liquidity and tax advantages, even though these are critically significant outcomes. With an exit strategy in place, business owners can move forward confidently, knowing they are in control as their life story unfolds. Customizable to serve the owner’s objectives, a succession plan can, for example, be structured to skip estate taxes for a generation.
  • A Buy-Sell Agreement protects ownership rights. Buy-sell agreements stabilize a business for employees and clients and protect the rights of co-owners, shareholders, and heirs, creating potential tax savings and guaranteeing a buyer for the asset.

Executive Benefit Restoration

Executive benefit replacement helps fill the retirement savings gap that results from:

  1. Governmental restrictions on tax-deferred saving through a qualified plan such as a traditional 401(k) plan.
  2. The IRS limits placed on Social Security benefits.
  3. Exclusion of Total Rewards in establishing a highly compensated employee’s life and disability benefits.

401(k) restoration is governed by IRS Section 409A, which covers most forms of nonqualified deferred compensation. Offering a nonqualified plan to highly compensated executives enables them to save, tax- deferred, up to 100% of their total compensation, which is salary plus all bonuses and rewards.

Simply put, the limits on qualified plan savings, paired with the limits on Social Security benefits, means that the more your earnings increase, the less (by percentage) you can save tax-deferred for retirement. This unintended but existing form of reverse discrimination can leave high-wage earners facing a substantial deficit in their retirement benefits.

And although you theoretically have a lifetime to offset the retirement savings gap you face, the disability insurance shortfall can become an unfortunate reality in anyone’s life at any moment.

Your FinSec Life team can help you and your organization build an affordable, customized executive benefit replacement strategy.

Estate Liquidity

Estate liquidity planning equips your heirs to manage your estate and their inheritance strategically.

Life insurance, as a component of estate liquidity planning, can help ensure that your family is never compromised by cash flow in the process of estate settlement. It can also be a source of capital to help your business fund the transitionary period following the loss of a key executive or provide the funds to buy a deceased partner’s business interests as part of a buy-sell agreement.

With many ways to structure your estate liquidity plan and ongoing developments involving your assets or those of your company, as well as periodic regulatory changes, you’ll want to evaluate your plan with guidance from a knowledgeable professional.

Family Businesses

Family businesses like yours are a foundational component of American values. Built on hard work, independence, entrepreneurial spirit, and exemplary integrity, your family business deserves the level of focused, one-on-one attention you’ll receive from the team at FinSec Life.

We understand that it is impossible to separate family from business in what you do, nor should you try.

Family has made your business strong. And achieving the success you’ve attained has required boldness, commitment, and sacrifice by you and others in your family.

At FinSec Life, your agenda is our agenda. We strive to optimize your financial wellness and help you achieve your goals.

  • Integrating your financial, insurance, business, and wealth transfer needs from a family-first, multidisciplinary perspective.
  • Positioning your business to maximize the core strengths inherent in a family enterprise.
  • Preserving your traditions, building your legacy, and helping you grow your family business for today
    and many tomorrows to come.

Deferred Compensation

Nonqualified deferred compensation plans, also known as NQDC plans or DC plans, help highly compensated executives (HCEs) save tax-deferred beyond the limits of qualified plans.

For Organizations as the Plan Sponsor

  • Deferred compensation can be a powerful tool for recruiting, rewarding, and retaining talented executives and key employees.
  • Companies can choose to make discretionary or incentive-based contributions.
  • Accounting protocols are simple and straightforward, and government disclosure requirements are limited.
  • Offering a nonqualified plan can help alleviate qualified plan nondiscrimination test failure, positioning the organization to better support the retirement readiness of all its employees.

For Executives as Plan Participants

  • Plan participants have options for withdrawing savings before they reach retirement age.
  • Both savings and earnings through a nonqualified plan are tax-deferred during the period that is likely the executive’s peak earning years, potentially creating a significant tax saving at the time of
    withdrawal.
  • Flexible distribution options (the timing and form of payouts) enable better long-term tax planning.

Deferred compensation plans are efficient and typically appeal to the organization and the participating executives. Companies guided by knowledgeable executive benefits consultants should explore the variety of options available for structuring and funding this valued executive benefit.

Hybrid Life/Long Term Care

You work hard to ensure the security and financial well-being of your family. In many cases, your commitment extends to your valued employees as well. But even solid financial planning may be challenged by the rising costs of long-term care for you or a family member in the event of illness, injury, cognitive decline, or reduced mobility.

Fact: Medicare and most health insurance plans do not cover long-term care costs. (medicare.gov) Medicaid may cover long-term care costs, but typically only when all other resources have been depleted.  Also, Medicaid options vary by state and, when applicable, offer limited to no personal choice regarding the terms of care.

  • Hybrid Life/Long Term Care insurance can help protect money already allocated for retirement.
  • A hybrid life/long term care plan protects an individual who doesn’t have a family member to act as a caregiver or doesn’t want to put this responsibility on their loved ones.
  • For family members or workers who lack the resources to pay out of pocket for care, a hybrid life/long term care plan can be the safety net between the person in need and what could be years of marginalized or inadequate care.

Life & Disability

“Insured workers in the United States, born in 2000, face a 1 in 4 chance of becoming disabled between the age of 20 and 65.” Social Security Administration 6-2020

Many organizations offer employees life and disability insurance plans. These plans, based on the employee’s qualified pay, are a valued benefit and increase the financial security of working Americans.

Yet employer-provided plans do not factor in bonus pay, long-term incentives, or other components of Total Rewards. Benefits are based on only a portion of an executive’s current compensation.

For companies, executive disability benefits can become part of a competitive benefits offering, increasing recruitment and retention. Plans can cover bonus compensation while transferring risk from the group long-term disability plan.

For highly compensated executives (HCEs), life and disability insurance plans are paid directly to named beneficiaries, creating both security and the freedom that comes with being able to fully care for yourself or your loved ones in the face of the unexpected.

Long-Term Incentive

A long term incentive plan (LTIP) is a deferred compensation strategy that can be highly beneficial to both the employer and the executive.

The plan may be tied to the price of company stock shares, to the value of the company, or structured around other targeted performance metrics or goals.

Vesting of the reward can be on a graduated schedule, allowing ownership of the award to be transferred to the employee incrementally. Or, it can be structured as cliff vesting, providing no executive access to the benefit, perhaps for several years, and then full access at a pre-established time.

A long-term incentive plan can stabilize executive leadership teams, as executives who leave a company before their long-term incentive has fully vested may forfeit the not-yet-vested portion of the reward.

Other strategies can be built into the LTIP, such as restricted covenants, non-compete or non- disparagement clauses, or a confidentiality clause, further enhancing the executive retention value of the plan for the organization.

Physician Benefit Restoration

Your medical career requires an intense investment of time, energy, and resources.

With education and professional development, the demands start while you are still in school and continue for as long as you are a practicing physician. And each phase of your career brings new responsibilities and considerations.

At FinSec Life, we strive to serve the very specific needs of physicians.

We recognize how little time physicians may have to address their own financial wellness, insurance, and retirement planning.

FinSec Life is committed to helping physicians like you achieve personal goals…in every stage of life.

  • Supporting the unique needs of physicians.
  • Optimizing tax-deferred savings opportunities for doctors.
  • Serving the needs of physicians so that they are free to focus on serving the needs of others.

Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans (SERPs)

Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans or SERPs can provide an effective strategy to help organizations reward and retain key talent.

SERPs position valued executives to save tax-deferred beyond the regulatory limits imposed on qualified plans. Because Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans can be tied to a vesting schedule, they can help inspire executive loyalty.

Flexible in design, SERPs can be structured as a defined benefit plan, a defined contribution plan, or other creative plan design customized by FinSec Life to serve your company’s objectives and the retirement goals of your selected plan participants.

Wealth Transfer

Wealth transfer planning enables you, as a family leader or business owner, to control your assets on your own terms.

Defining your wealth transfer objectives is a critical step in establishing a purposeful and intentional wealth transfer plan. But waiting until you know every answer could result in waiting too long. Opportunities to maximize your legacy could be overlooked. Misunderstandings in your family or company could develop, and the potential for valued tax savings could be lost forever.

Let the team at FinSec Life help you prepare strategically and thoughtfully to transition your success into succession.

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