Business owners · Professional firms
Professional-service firms
When a firm has several owners, the biggest risks are usually between people: what happens to a share when a partner dies, becomes disabled or retires, and how the firm copes if a key relationship-holder leaves.
The planning issues
What usually matters for professional firms
Not every issue applies to every owner. These are the questions we most often help owners work through, with your accountant and lawyer leading on tax and legal design.
A buy-sell agreement that matches today’s firm
Many agreements set a valuation method and funding terms years ago. If the firm has grown, the obligation to buy a departing owner’s share may be much larger than the funding behind it.
Check buy-sell fundingKey people and client relationships
Revenue often depends on a few people. Losing one can reduce profit, trigger recruiting costs and strain credit at the same time.
Check key-person exposureRetirement and partner transitions
Planned exits need a funding schedule too: instalments, corporate cash, or a mix. The agreement and the funding should be designed together with your lawyer.
Each owner’s estate
A partner’s family usually wants cash, not a minority share in a firm. Estate liquidity planning and the buy-sell should line up.
Check estate liquidityWhere to start
Planning checks for this situation
Each check shows any estimated funding gap under assumptions you can see and change. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.
Planning check
Buy-sell funding
Your buyout obligation under a shareholder agreement versus how it would actually be funded.
Open the checkPlanning check
Key-person exposure
The cost to the business if a key person is gone, versus reserves, credit and existing coverage.
Open the checkPlanning check
Estate liquidity
What your estate would need to pay at death, minus the cash and coverage already available.
Open the checkHow we help
What a review can do
Insurance is one of the options we compare across multiple companies. Insurance advice and applications for Ontario residents are handled by Jackson Armstrong, Financial Consultant, LLQP. When a gap is better closed another way, or an estimate shows none, we say so.
- Read your agreement’s valuation and funding terms with you and flag questions for your lawyer.
- Compare funding approaches side by side: reserves, instalment terms and insurance from several insurers, including ownership structure and cost.
- Keep funding aligned as the firm’s value changes.
Next step
Book a no-cost business-owner review
About 20 minutes. We look at what your corporation should keep accessible, what it should protect, and how the value you have built transfers. No recommendation until we understand the facts, and no obligation.