Executive Benefits
Executive benefit plans
Executive benefit plans enable you to selectively attract, retain and reward key employees and executives of your business. PensionmarkMeridien designs, implements and administers executive benefit plans that supplement restrictive qualified retirement and group insurance plans. We create executive benefit plans that are cost-efficient and effective.
These plans include:
Salary Continuation Plan
Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans (SERP)
Split Dollar Insurance Plans
Executive Bonus Plans
Deferred Compensation Plans
Executive Group Term Carve Out Plans
Beyond the 401K
Our programs are designed to help you meet your goals
Employee stock options and programs like 401(k) plans are a good start, but they may not meet the financial expectations of the most talented executives. Executive employees want to enjoy a rewarding, worry-free retirement, pay for their children’s college education, and establish sound financial security. They participate in retirement programs to help make these dreams realities. Due to government limitations, executives may not be able to achieve these lifestyle goals through your current benefit programs. We are chosen as trusted corporate advisors because we carefully evaluate current costs and benefits, and explore possibilities for better, more efficient programs that may help executives reach and protect their financial goals.
Nonqualified Deferred Compensation Plans
SUPPLEMENTAL EXECUTIVE RETIREMENT PLANS (SERPS)
These types of plans are commonly called “non-qualified” because they cannot meet the broad coverage rules that are necessary to secure the special tax treatment afforded to tax-qualified retirement plans.
Executive Group Carve Out Plans
Executive Disability Insurance for High Earning Professionals
In today’s disability insurance market, 60% of income has been the industry standard target income replacement figure. One of the biggest shortfalls group disability programs and event traditional disability insurance carriers have is their limitation on the size of monthly benefits. Obtaining adequate income protection for highly compensated individuals is a challenging process, and it normally takes two to three separate disability insurance policies to accomplish. With the average disability claim length lasting roughly three years, an individual will need to have a sizable savings account if they are not insured at 60% income replacement.* At PensionmarkMeridien, we have decades of experience in providing solutions for high earning executives that have incomes ranging from the high hundred-of-thousands to the multimillions. Whether creating a specialized executive Group Disability contract specifically for your applicable professionals or creating a special individual disability insurance supplemental program, PensionmarkMeridien provides your employees with the benefit amounts and contract provisions to provide piece of mind.
* Source: US DOL Bureau of Labor Statistics
Executive Life Insurance Programs
Your employees appreciate your providing them with a group life insurance plan. However, group life insurance plans typically have death benefit amounts and portability limitations that adversely impact your higher earners. PensionmarkMeridien assists clients in the design of group life insurance programs and executive life insurance programs; by carving out some (or all) of the executives’ coverage in the Group Life plan, potential savings may be achieved in the basic group life program, while delivering higher benefit amounts and policy provisions to satisfy the planning needs your executive population. Further, many companies offer their employees high-value supplemental coverage in the form of permanent life Insurance. Permanent life insurance can provide benefits that are not typically available in group plans, such as true portability, ability to be owned by an irrevocable life insurance trust, level premiums, and tax-deferred cash value accumulation.
Funding Executive Benefit Programs
Funding executive benefits is often done using company cash, taxable investments, institutionally priced life insurance contracts, or a combination thereof. Often the costs of utilizing and the benefits of utilizing Corporate Owned Life Insurance (COLI) or Bank Owned Life Insurance (BOLI) are misunderstood.
Corporate Owned Life Insurance
(COLI)
What is COLI? COLI is utilizing life insurance which your company can purchase to insure the lives of key employees. And, why should we consider COLI?
• Gains on policy cash value are tax-deferred and may, if held until the death, be income-tax-free.
• Your company gets favorable access to cash values to fund plan distributions through withdrawals to basis and loans.
• Reallocation within the policy does not trigger taxable gains (like in taxable investments held by a for-profit company).
Our longstanding and deep relationships with top-rated COLI carriers means you get in-depth analysis of product choices, design, costs and the supporting due diligence needed for the successful implementation of a COLI program.
Bank Owned Life Insurance
(BOLI)
Banks need to provide a competitive offering of employee benefits while also managing costs. One way to do that is by offsetting these expenses and/or informally funding executive benefits with a tax-advantaged bank-owned life insurance (BOLI) asset.
BOLI is a life insurance policy banks can buy to insure the lives of key employees. As the policy's owner and beneficiary, the bank gets unique benefits, including the ability to:
• Insure the economic loss of a key employee’s premature death
• Offset the growing costs of employee health and welfare ERISA plans
• Provide cost recovery for pre- and post-retirement executive compensation and benefit plans
• Hedge against the changing value of a liability obligation
BOLI offers:
• An asset value that accumulates on a tax-deferred basis, treating the change in value as "other non-interest income"
• Income-tax-free death proceeds for recovering the present and long-term costs of employee benefits and compensation plans
• A more efficient method of financing employee benefit and compensation plans than alternative