Life insurance is a very common asset that figures into many people’s long-term financial planning. Purchasing a life insurance policy is a way to protect your loved ones, providing them with the financial support they may need after you die. For example, you may purchase life insurance to help your spouse cover mortgage payments or everyday bills or fund your children’s college education. Life insurance pays out either a lump sum or regular payments on your death, giving your dependents financial support after you’ve gone. The amount of money paid out depends on the level of cover you buy.
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Jumbo Insurance
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Whole of Life Insurance Plan
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Whole of Life Critical Illness Plan
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Term Insurance
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Keyman Insurance
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Business Protection Insurance
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Group Life Insurance
Cover as liquidity, not as a product
For internationally mobile families, life cover is rarely about replacing income. It is about liquidity: making sure that when someone dies, the estate can settle what falls due without being forced to sell the very assets the plan was built around.
That problem is sharper across borders. Property in one country, a business in another and heirs in a third can mean liabilities crystallising in weeks while the assets take a year or more to realise. Cover sized correctly closes that gap. Cover bought without reference to the structure often sits in the wrong name and makes the problem worse.
Where it matters
- Estate liquidity — so an executor is not forced into a distressed sale to meet a liability
- Jumbo cover — larger sums assured than a domestic policy will underwrite, arranged through international insurers
- Key person cover — where a private business depends on one or two individuals
- Trust-held policies — written so the proceeds sit where the plan needs them, rather than adding to the estate they were meant to relieve
- Currency matching — a policy paying in a currency the family does not spend in solves less than it appears to
The conditions, stated plainly
Cover is subject to underwriting. Larger sums assured usually require medical evidence and sometimes financial justification, and an insurer can decline, load the premium or apply exclusions. A policy only pays if premiums have been maintained and the claim is admitted, and non-disclosure at application is the most common reason a claim fails. We would rather set that out at the start than have a family discover it later.
How we work on it
We establish what cover already exists and who owns it, size the actual shortfall against the liabilities the estate will face, and place cover through insurers that underwrite internationally mobile lives. Where the policy should be held in trust, we design that alongside it — we are not a law firm, so the drafting is done by the lawyers in the relevant jurisdiction.
Sometimes the answer is that the existing cover is adequate and the money is better spent elsewhere. We will tell you when that is the case.