Talking Shop Blog

The Small Business Administration website has a section on business insurance.

Included are articles on the types of business insurance, tips for buying insurance, links to insurance resources and more.

One of the 5 tips mentioned is “Assess Your Insurance Coverage on an Annual Basis”.

We couldn’t agree more. That applies whether it’s group health insurance, general liability insurance or property and casualty insurance.

It also applies to business life insurance, including buy/sell insurance and key person insurance.

We noted yesterday that premiums on life insurance policies have been decreasing.

Here’s a good example.

Let’s take the owner of a manufacturing company who purchased a $500,000 annual renewable term policy about 10 years ago.  The annual premium has been increasing each year as the owner gets older, and this years premium was up to $5,200.

With a comprehensive insurance review, we were able to reduce the annual cost for the same amount of insurance to $2,195 per year, guaranteed for 20 years.

That’s $3,000 per year in annual savings.

As we’ve said before, the insurance marketplace has been changing and premiums have been decreasing,

You can find out more on business insurance at http://www.sba.gov/category/navigation-structure/starting-managing-business/managing-business/running-business/insurance .

To learn more about a comprehensive insurance review and how you might lower your costs, contact me at jerry.lopatka@duganlopatka.com or call the office at 630-665-4440.

The Federal Reserve Board has a webpage labeled “A Consumer’s Guide to Mortgage Refinancing”, where you’ll find questions like this:

Have interest rates fallen? Or do you expect them to go up?

Would you like to switch into a different type of mortgage?

These are questions to ask when you’re evaluating your current mortgage.

And similar questions can be asked when you review your current life insurance.

Problem is, many people own policies that have never been reviewed since the policies were first purchased. And that can be just as costly as having a high rate mortgage.

With life expectancies increasing and mortality tables extending, carriers have been lowering the annual premiums on life insurance policies.

On the other hand, with recent stock market conditions and low investment returns, some policies are greatly underfunded. 

Most people who own homes will review and ultimately refinance their home mortgages every 3 to 5 years.

A comprehensive review of your insurance portfolio should also be performed every 3 to 5 years.

You can find out more on mortgage refinancing at http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/refinancings/default.htm

And more tomorrow on insurance reviews and how to lower your premium costs.