Corporate insurance · Business owners · British Columbia
A buy-sell clause without money behind it forces the survivors to buy out an estate they can't afford, on a timeline they didn't choose. Key-person, buy-sell and continuity coverage turn bad news into a funded plan instead of a fire sale.
The three corporate policies
When a partner dies, the policy pays the corporation or surviving shareholders exactly enough to buy the estate's shares at the agreed price. The family gets fair value in cash; the survivors keep control of the company.
The rainmaker, the licensed professional, the operator who holds the client relationships. Key-person life and CI coverage gives the company cash to survive the revenue hit, recruit a replacement, and reassure lenders.
The most common business disaster isn't a death — it's the owner out for eight months with a cardiac event. CI pays a lump sum on diagnosis; business overhead expense coverage keeps rent, payroll and leases paid while you recover.
Continuity planning
Continuity isn't one document — it's knowing which money arrives, and who signs the cheques, for each scenario.
Surgery, injury, a family emergency. The business survives on delegation and cash flow — if signing authority and client coverage were arranged in advance.
A serious diagnosis or long recovery. Revenue drops, fixed costs don't. This is the scenario that quietly kills profitable small companies.
The shareholder agreement executes: shares are valued, the estate is bought out, leadership transfers. Without funding, this becomes litigation.
Straight answers
The agreement creates the obligation; it doesn't create the money. If it says the survivors must buy a deceased partner's shares and there's no funding, they either borrow at the worst possible moment, sell assets, or fight the estate. Insurance is how the promise gets kept.
It depends on your structure and the buyout mechanism in your agreement (corporate redemption vs. cross-purchase). Corporate ownership can be tax-efficient — including a capital dividend account credit on death benefits — but it has to be set up correctly with your accountant and lawyer. We coordinate all three chairs; we don't freelance tax advice.
Premiums will differ, and that's normal. The agreement or the corporation typically handles cost-sharing so no one subsidizes the other unfairly. This is a design question we solve routinely — it's not a reason to skip funding.
Yes — this is common with BC lenders on acquisition and expansion financing. We place the coverage, structure the assignment to the lender correctly, and make sure the policy outlives the loan so the value isn't wasted.
Yes, and it often makes sense to review together — group benefits for retention, corporate coverage for continuity, and personal coverage for your own household are three layers of one plan. We work across all of them with the same carriers.
No chatbots. One advisor.
One call to map your obligations against your coverage. If everything's already funded, we'll tell you that too — it takes twenty minutes to find out.