Insurance Services:

We can provide cover to ensure that if a shareholder in your company became ill or died the remaining owners can fund the buyout of that shareholder. This allows for the owners to maintain control of the business and the outgoing shareholder gets a fair price for their portion of the company. This results in less disruption during a difficult time.

What would happen if a key member of staff was unable to work for a month or more? Would the turnover reduce? And how would this affect the profit? Would debt repayment be able to continue in the medium or long-term? We have solutions to allow cash flow in the business to continue, and lump sum covers to reduce debt.

ACC cover can be improved to provide better cover for shareholders and sole proprietors. There are also opportunities to reduce levies by significant amounts and also provide more certainty when it comes to making a claim.

If your health failed, what would happen to your income? Would your mortgage repayments continue? We can arrange covers to ensure that your living expenses continue and that any long-term debt can be reduced or repaid for significant health issues. This means that your family is looked after now and into the future.

It is easy to underestimate the impact on a family from serious but prevalent conditions, such as heart attacks, cancers and strokes. While it is often thought that working hours could be reduced to look after an ill partner, or family could help with childcare while they recover, this may be possible in the short term, but what about if the illness continues for six-months or more? Would it still be easy to be flexible at work, manage the pressure of a mortgage and care for your partner?

Often people rely on ACC to look after them if they couldn’t work. It is important to remember that while ACC is a good back stop, it does have its limitations. Particularly that they only cover injuries caused by accidents, and nothing caused by age-related degeneration or illness. We offer solutions that look after your medical costs and provide income if you can’t work from injury or illness.

This is a specialised area of insurance and does require an understanding of income, debt and equity and how that relating to different farming types. Questions that need to be considered include who would run the farm if you can’t. The need for replacement staff may vary at different points in the year and the cover needs to reflect the greater needs during peak seasons.

What are the intentions of the farm ownership long term? While there may be a significant amount of equity in the farm, if you want to keep it in the family, then it can’t be sold to provide cash flow in the event of disability or death. In this instance lump sum covers can reduce or retire debt so that the farm can stay in the family as intended.

There are also adjustments that can be made to your ACC cover to improve it and/or make savings. The standard ACC cover is based on taxable income, and this is often not reflective of actual income and realistic living costs. This means that this cover often fails farmers at claim time.