Protecting the business you’re building

Shareholder and Business Protection

The majority of SME’s in Australia are privately owned businesses. We understand the significant events that owners face including succession planning, the loss of key staff through resignation or retirement, poor health or even the death of an owner.

In our view, the key question for all small business owners to address is; Just how well is my business positioned to cope with the expected and unexpected challenges it may face?

How we help

Financial planning for small business is about protecting yourself, your family and your business against all of the foreseeable and unforeseeable ‘what ifs’ involved in running a business.

Our role is to work as a strategic partner to assist you in identifying the risks you face and in developing a comprehensive plan addressing these risks as a business owner.

Some of the confronting and difficult issues business owners face include:

• Would your business suffer financially if it lost any of its key people?
• Would you want any owners’ spouse or next of kin to remain in the business if one owner died or became disabled?
• Do you have a formalised and professionally drafted shareholder agreement to ensure succession of your business should anything happen to any owner?
• How would a sale be facilitated and funded?
• Is there a regular review timetable for valuing the business and making adjustments to the succession plan when necessary?
• Will I have enough in retirement?

Our Service Offering

We facilitate an end to end approach to address these issues, delivering certainty for business owners around the realisation and protection of their equity in the business.

Through this approach we are able to assist you in several ways:

• Protecting your share of the business through shareholder agreements:

These are legal documents that are designed to provide all stakeholders with certainty around the transfer of shares from one party to another. This may be as a result of death, disability, trauma or retirement of one of the shareholders.

• Buy/ Sell or Shareholder Protection insurance:

This ensures that an outgoing shareholder or their estate receives a pre-agreed amount for the shares held. Importantly the business is able to continue as a going concern and adjust the level of cover as the value of your business changes.

• Safeguarding your operations through key person insurance:

A company owned plan designed to protect the key revenue drivers or capital providers of your business.

• Succession Planning and Strategies

A comprehensive and well defined exit plan ensures the realisation of your share in a tax efficient manner to ensure that you fully utilise and Small Business CGT Concessions that may be available.

• Claims Management

In the event of a claim we will work with you to ensure the process is handled compassionately, professionally and efficiently.