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[Music] hi I'm Nick nelman one of the senior employee benefit Consultants here at drewy today we're going be diving into the run with group life insurance we're going be talking about the key factors of group life insurance and provide an overview of what you need to have in place for your company [Music] policy group life insurance otherwise own in death and service is a core part of an employee benefit package it provides a tax-free lump sum in the event of one of your employees was to pass away during during employment uh it gives you pece of Mind as the employer that you one your employees are looks after two it gives your employees peace of mind that their beneficiaries are going to be looked after in event that they pass away prematurely um it can help cover the costs of things like mortgages um obviously lost income as well uh but also things like school fees um and many other Financial commitments that we all have so let's go into a little more detail on group life insurance it is a company paid scheme so you as the employer will be the policy holder you're ensuring your employees earnings and you typically cover multiple of your employees basic annual salary normally between two and four times salary you can also cover a fixed benefit which works for say zero hour contract staff that don't necessarily have fixed earnings it's written under a trust um meaning that any benefits of the trust are typically paid outside of the estate uh so it's written in a very tax efficient manner um and that's why with all of these factors it's considered a really core part of a benefit package because as well as all of those benefits as it's an employer paid policy it can also be written off as a business expense in most instances so what are the benefits of group life insurance for you as an employer it Fosters a level of paternalism for your employees um it helps to to show that you have a genuine commitment to employees and their Financial Security it also aids with recruitment and also retaining your staff to show look this is the benefit we've got here if anything happens to you you and your family are going to be looked after um it's a really valuable benefit that people have and I will say alongside workplace pensions which you have to have by law having group life Assurance in place is the next benefit you need to get because you think historically U group life insurance was known as death in service uh death in service was linked to death in service pensions to occupational pension schemes so people always used to have it as part of their workplace pensions anyway so that's why now I said workplace pensions group life insurance it's a really manable benefit um and they say it's cost effective for you um because you can run off a business expense but it also shows you employees that they looked after and these policies do pay out and we see it all the time so how much does group life insurance cost uh this is going to be based on the extent of cover you looking to put in place for employees uh so one of the most important is of course the salaries of your employees and the level of cover you looking to provide so say you're looking to cover a fixed benefit of say four times a salary the cost is going to be higher than two times also the industry that you're in U so some Industries are seen as lower risk to insurers and others so generally desk based employees are quite low risk um the demographic of your Workforce is also important so um depending on sort of Ages if you have an older Workforce that seems as a bit more of a risk might be a bit more expensive but generally as of any insurance like this the younger you are um the cheaper the cover tends to be other factors around company size um so you depend on your head count and also where you are based to say for instance you were based in a central London postcode that risk is seen as slightly higher to an insurer than it would be if say you were based rurally in somewhere like the Midlands so although group life insurances a really important benefit it's also um important to understand if your company is eligible um to to set up a scheme uh so first you need to be a UK entity you typically need more than um two or three employees depending on the provider um and you also need a a UK bank account in most instances uh so when it comes to setting up the policy absolutely then you as the employer will set the eligibility so that'll be a minimum and maximum age normally you can join from 16 typically up to state pension age sometime age 70 can go up to age 75 um also the employees need to have UK contracts of employment although you can cover people on circums overseas um if they are sort even if they're longterm circums um people working overseas as long as they contracted to the UK paid in Sterling that they're F to be covered um but you can also set up your own criteria around sort of like waiting periods so you may tie in the benefit to your probation period say right people can't join for up for 3 months there's lots of different options around how that policy works and like like anything like buying a car the different um additions that you add to it and things you change can lower or increase the cost of it um so yeah it's really important to sort of think right who do I want to cover and then we back when engineer the geme from there so what happens if you have less than three employees and you can't get a group life Assurance scheme an alternative is what we call a relevant Life Plan and that is whereby you can cover a single employee again it's a company-owned policy um the company pays the premiums for that also can be written off as a business expense and it's also written under trust in the same way uh so that any benefit potentially paid outside of the estate so relevant life plan is a good alternative if you've got sort one or two employees you want to cover you can't get them covered for a group scheme so do group life Assurance policies need to be written under trust the answer is yes absolutely in fact providers actually won't set up these pans without a trust being in place um there various different options around trusts and and how they can be written they can be written under registered pension uh taxation law they can written under inheritance tax law um you as the employer can choose to be the trustees alternatively you can use the professional trustees that your provider appoints look after it these are all decisions and that that can be discussed with with your employee benefit consultant that we can help you with uh but the idea being yes these plans are written under trust um and any benefits of the trust that are paid out in the event of the employees death are generally taxfree and paid outside of their estate for more information on group life insurance please visit our website there's lots of use of information on there and frequently asked questions alternatively if you'd like to talk to one of our employee benefit Specialists please give us a call they'll be able to guide you through all the aspects of group life insurance and other employee benefits and answer any questions that you may [Music] have