Ok, so I’m kind of on a rip about business life insurance and business executives lately, but what I’m finding is that there seem to be a lot of CEO’s and other executives that are paying way too much for their business life insurance or have been declined for some health issue that given the right agent and right company, could be approved. Case in point is a case I just got approved on the CEO of a large distribution business. He lives in Canada and had gone through virtually all of the Canadian life insurance companies where he was declined across the board because of his business related foreign travel. Health isn’t an issue at all but he has been traveling sparingly to an occasionally dangerous part of the world to sign contracts and meet with business interests for 30 years. His agent called and asked if I could find him the large policy he needed to carry as collateral.

Within a week we had a company on board, comfortable with the travel and anxious to put the business in their portfolio. Since he was from outside the US he had to come here to sign the application and take an exam which he worked in with a one week family vacation. Also, since he was from out of the country I asked him to have his doctor put all of his records on a disk and send directly to us along with his business financials so we could submit everything to the company at once, application, exam, business financials and medical records. Within 10 days of the application and exam we had the life insurance approval he hadn’t been able to find anywhere in Canada in several months of trying. I would love to claim that I’m the only independent life insurance agent in the country that could pull this off, but having experience with out of the box business cases certainly helped. Others with similar business styles and connections could have done the same thing. But I will claim that the group of others is very small.

Far more common than a foreign travel glitch is the executive who has had a health issue that most companies won’t approve and will, at best, rate very highly. We have helped executives to secure life insurance approvals or better rates in cases declined elsewhere. We also have a fix when there is an imminent deadline and the CEO needs a life insurance policy for loan collateral and they get declined through their favorite company a week before a loan needs to close. Changing the loan closing could lose an important interest rate or blow a whole deal and we can get business life insurance in force in as little as 5 business days. For one client this saved the day because he needed a large life insurance policy in force quickly in order to solidify a deal that just popped up. He had life insurance in force, but not enough to satisfy the need. We were able to get $10 million in force in 3 business days.

Bottom line. In a world where international business is more common every day and the speed of business transactions happen on line and fast, life insurance companies and more importantly life insurance agents, need to adjust to these new situations. We are past the world that will let that life insurance obligation in a business deal ride until you get it figured out and delays can cost millions or more. If you have questions or need more information on business life insurance, or have been derailed by a business life insurance application gone wrong, call or email me directly. My name is Ed Hinerman. Let’s talk.