Most of the coverage discussed on this site is personal — sized to an individual's income, debts and family. Business owners usually need a second layer on top of that: coverage built around the business itself, owned by or structured through the corporation rather than the individual.
Key person insurance
If the business would take a real financial hit from losing a specific person — an owner, a top salesperson, whoever holds the technical knowledge that keeps things running — key person insurance protects the business against that. The company is the beneficiary, and the payout can cover lost revenue during a transition, the cost of recruiting and training a replacement, or simply keeping lenders and suppliers confident that the business remains stable.
Buy-sell agreement funding
For a business with more than one owner, this is often the most important piece and the most commonly skipped. Without funding in place, a surviving owner may be forced to either come up with cash they don't have to buy out a deceased partner's share, or end up in business with that partner's spouse or estate. Life insurance funds the buyout directly, so ownership transfers cleanly without draining company cash or taking on debt at the worst possible time.
Corporate-owned life insurance as a planning tool
Permanent life insurance held inside a corporation can be a tax-efficient way to deal with retained earnings the business doesn't need for day-to-day operations. Done properly, a portion of the death benefit can flow to shareholders' estates through the Capital Dividend Account with favourable tax treatment. This is genuinely useful in the right situation and genuinely wrong in others — it needs to be coordinated with your accountant, not decided from an insurance conversation alone.
Group living benefits for employees
Offering group critical illness or disability coverage as part of an employee benefits package is a real differentiator for attracting and keeping good people, especially at a business too small to compete purely on salary. It's a separate product from the individual coverage discussed elsewhere on this site, priced and underwritten differently as a group.
Key-person living benefits
The same logic behind key person life insurance applies to illness and injury, not just death. If a critical person is sidelined for months by a health event rather than lost permanently, the business still faces a revenue and operations gap — key-person critical illness or disability coverage addresses that version of the risk.
Where to start
Corporate insurance planning touches your accountant and possibly your lawyer as much as it touches insurance — the right structure depends on how your business is set up and what you're trying to accomplish. A first conversation is about mapping out which of these actually apply to your situation before bringing in the rest of your advisory team.