Abundant Protection for the Business Owner and the Professional

Whether you’re a sole proprietor, a partner in a business or a professional in a practice, you need special forms of disability insurance to protect your business and yourself. We can offer you the highest quality business disability insurance coverage around:

Policies that pay benefits or reimburse expenses if you are unable to perform the material and substantial duties of your own occupation due to a covered sickness or injury.

Policies that can fund buy-out agreements in the event of a serious, prolonged, or permanent total disability insurance.

Business Reducing Term1 Disability Insurance (BRT) Is Inexpensive

The Business Reducing Term Disability Insurance product is an inexpensive solution, customized to work with your business loan. If you have a $250,000 loan that you are paying off over 10 years, your Business Reducing Term disability insurance policy benefit period will align with the term period of the loan. The actual loss payee of the policy is the lending institution so should you ever become disabled under the terms of the policy, the monthly benefit payment goes directly to the lender to  pay your scheduled monthly loan obligation, including principle and interest.

If you are expanding your business, buying a business, or buying into an existing business make sure that you protect yourself in the event of a disability. The bank will expect monthly payments, even if you are disabled, so to help protect your financial security by protecting your business loan with a Guardian/Berkshire Life Insurance Company Business Reducing Term policy. Make sure that when you request a quote from our web site, you indicate that you want a Business Reducing Term Disability Insurance quote. Please also let us know what your scheduled monthly payments are, or will be, and for how long you will be making payments.


Business Overhead Expense Insurance²

"If you are business owner, there are two incomes that you must protect…your personal income, and your business income…"

Overhead Expense Disability Insurance is designed to reimburse your business for overhead expenses during your disability. This policy can insure up to $30,000 a month in covered overhead expenses. No small business can stay open long while the business owner is not generating new revenue. In a very short time, the business may either shut down, or have to be sold. An overhead expense disability policy can help insure that a business owner returns to a healthy business following a period of disability.

Overhead Expense Disability Insurance provides benefits to reimburse normal and customary fixed business expenses while a business owner is disabled.  Business overhead expenses mount up very quickly during a disability. If you have $20,000 a month in overhead, just six months of disability leave you with a $120,000 of debt, without any new revenue coming into your business because you were not there.

The premiums are deductible, too. The Internal Revenue Service has ruled (Rev.Rul.55-26, 1955-2 CB 11) that premiums paid for an overhead expense disability policy are tax deductible as a business expense. While benefits received at claim would be treated as income, such income is used to pay the deductible expenses that this coverage covers.

What is the difference between Overhead Expense and a personal policy?

While a personal disability insurance policy is designed to replace your personal income, an Overhead Expense Disability policy covers the expenses your business still incurs while you are disabled. A Personal Disability Insurance policy usually pays benefits to age 65, an Overhead Expense Disability policy usually has a shorter elimination period, and a shorter benefit period of one or two years. The reason an Overhead Expense Disability Insurance policy has a shorter benefit period is simple, no small business will stay open more than two years if the owner is disabled. In that time you will either shut down, or sell the business. An overhead expense disability insurance policy gives you the time, and ability to make the decision to come back to work or to sell the business.

Answer this question:

How long could your business stay open if you were disabled?
While you are disabled, your business should be able to remain open. It may not be possible if overhead expenses continue while you are not there to bring income into the business. Allow us to show you how easily this liability can be protected by contacting us.

Disability Buy-Out3 Insurance

Protecting Your Business from Disability - Your Own or Your Partner's

One of the most overlooked insurance issues for small business owners is how disability can affect your buy-out arrangement within your partnership agreement. Although most properly structured partnership agreements contain built-in or separate disability buy-out provisions, many are left unfunded.

What we are referring to here is that payment to satisfy the agreement upon the disability of a partner is not secured through insurance. This can have disastrous consequences for the business. Many sad examples can be found of small business failing because of the cash drain caused by the disability of one business partner without the necessary capital to fund the agreement. Always remember: the agreement may state that the disabled partner is entitled to the fair value for their share of the business, and rightfully so, but how will you pay them?

Think of the issue from both perspectives. The remaining working partner deserves to own 100% of the business so they can move on without undue hardship, while the disabled partner deserves the fair value for his/her share of the business. Its' simply a smart business decision.

A Disability Buy-Out Insurance Policy can provide peace of mind for your small business.

Disability insurance policy forms 4100² and 3100³ underwritten and issued by Berkshire Life Insurance Company of America, Pittsfield, MA, a wholly owned stock subsidiary of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America (Guardian), New York, NY. Policy forms AH55-A¹, OE102², NC82², and AH84³ provided by Guardian. Products not available in all states. Product provisions and features vary state to state.