The business planning market has never been riper. While the more traditional estate planning market may be a bigger stretch for many advisors, there are close to 30 million small businesses that need your help and they need it now. The issues keeping business owners awake at night have not changed:

• Concern over losing critical assets – people – themselves or key employees
• The ability to recruit, retain and reward those key employees
• Ensuring business continuity and succession
• Retirement income needs
• Growing and protecting personal wealth, with that wealth typically tied up in the business

What has changed is the new and favorable tax environment in which this planning can be implemented. And for business owners, planning for both personal needs and the business is often very tightly connected to dramatically expanding the need for insurance products. As an advisor, you're uniquely positioned to deliver solutions for accumulation, and for pure protection risks such as untimely death, long term care and longevity concerns, and disability. As the old saying goes, business owners either exit their business vertically or horizontally – and since the future is unpredictable, both contingencies need to be anticipated and planned for.

We're now all aware of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Obviously, the outcome of this act is favorable for most taxpayers whether individuals or businesses. But to remind you of just one very important element: the C corporation tax rate has been reduced from a high of 35% to a flat 21%. As a result, cash flow to business owners has increased and the use of business dollars has become cheaper. With the goal of helping these business owners sleep well at night, we can address critical planning needs via additional personal dollars and/or more efficient business dollars.

If you have been looking to expand and grow your market, then 2018 and beyond provides an exciting and potentially lucrative opportunity.

 So why the hesitation?

Not jumping all over this? Not reaching out to existing business clients or prospecting for new ones? The news isn't big enough?

OK. So there might be a stigma to life insurance planning in the business market; some of the needs are often addressed by term insurance (low revenue) while permanent sales (high revenue) require a level of expertise, attention to detail, and ongoing administration that is daunting to many advisors.

What if Windsor could deliver a solution that tears away the perception and stigma associated with working with businesses? Wouldn't it be great to plug into a platform that disrupts what we often consider traditional term sales and also takes away the complexity associated with permanent sales in a corporate environment? Most importantly, what if you could deliver multiple, flexible solutions that fully address your clients' needs versus selling them only what they can afford?

The solution exists

Although it may be considered the industry's best kept secret, the many advisors using it so successfully might prefer to keep the Lincoln LifeComp platform all to themselves.

In a nutshell, LifeComp is a suite of employer-sponsored plans that share a common funding vehicle (life insurance) and deliver several powerful advantages including unique plan design and presentation, full plan documentation, and comprehensive plan administration.

And LifeComp will help you change the game when it comes to conventional thinking around term insurance solving isolated issues. Through a more comprehensive approach, you can address needs such as buy-sell funding and key-person risk with flexible solutions that sync up with the desire for supplemental retirement, death benefit, and longevity planning. And when that happens, permanent sales happen!

The LifeComp Suite features four benefit plans that offer varying degrees of employer ownership and control. The plans will help businesses:

• Recruit, retain and reward top talent
• Build supplemental retirement income or death benefits for business owners and/or key executives
• Receive attractive options for balance sheet reporting
• Streamline plan administration and reporting

Want to learn more? We'll take you deeper into this unique set of solutions in future blogs. Can't wait? Check out these LifeComp resources:

Videos on Demand – [approximately 30 minutes each]

• Leveraging the Business Dollar – Life insurance strategies for a new tax environment in 2018 and beyond
• Lincoln LifeComp – nonqualified plan designs for business owners and their key executives
• Lincoln LifeComp FlexKey Cross-Purchase Arrangement – Buy-sell funding strategy that provides business owners with control, flexibility and options

Additional Resources

• Planning for Success – The Lincoln LifeComp suite of business and estate plans
• Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Overview
• Plan Administration Expertise – The Lincoln LifeComp Suite
• FlexKey – Buy-Sell planning and personal planning in one solution