The majority of insurance agency owners say they will not be giving bonuses or gifts to their employees to celebrate the holidays or the end of the year, according to the latest IFAwebnews.com poll.

Exactly 66% of survey participants say they will give no bonus or gifts to their employees this year.

Another 19% say they will reward all employees with a bonus, while 6% of participants will only award their top employees a bonus this year.

Yet another 6% of respondents plan to give bonuses based on peoples time at the agency, and the remaining 3% of participants will give their employees a gift like a ham, according to the IFAwebnews.com poll.

Take part in our next IFAwebnews.com poll.

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this subject, while term life insurance is a great option for many people and purposes, there are situations for which permanent life insurance might make more sense.  To continue the list:

• To Provide Liquidity to Pay Estate Taxes:  This is one of the reasons we see most frequently.  People with large estates may be subject to estate taxes at death.  Life insurance owned by an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT) can escape estate taxation and provide the liquidity needed to pay those taxes.
• To Provide for Business Continuation:  Permanent life insurance can be a better solutions than term life insurance for funding a business continuation plan.  It insures the policy will be in force regardless of how long the business owner stays active in the business.
• To Maximize a Pension:  A retiree may elect to take the highest (life) payout option on his/her pension, while still protecting the surviving spouse.  Permanent life insurance is a great way to accomplish this.
• To Provide Creditor Protection:  Some states protect policy cash values from the claims of creditors.
• To Provide for Executive Benefits:  If structured properly, policy cash values can be used to fund deferred compensation retirement benefits paid to executives.  Death benefits can be used as cost recovery mechanisms for the company.

We will continue this list in our next post.  In the meantime, feel free to look at permanent life insurance quotes or term life insurance quotes.

My daughter was seriously injured in a car accident in September 2009. A passenger in the other car was killed and the driver imprisoned for dangerous driving.

His insurer, Admiral, should be paying for my daughter’s treatment but is arguing over liability. It made an offer last August but her solicitor is not happy that he has everything needed to complete the valuation. My daughter does not know whether to accept the offer or continue waiting. She has legal expenses insurance on her motor policy with NFU Mutual which pays for her solicitor.

NFU has promised to push this along and wrote to your daughter explaining the legal position.

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A national independent broker-dealer is raising fees, including its advisor affiliation fee, starting Jan. 1, 2012, after two decades of maintaining the same rates.

LPL Financial plans to instate the following increases: for branches with 1-4 advisors, the fee will increase from $125/month per advisor to $175/month per advisor; for branches with 5-11 advisors, the fee will increase from $600/month divided by the number of advisors in the branch to a flat rate of $125/advisor; and for branches with 12 or more advisors, the fee will increase from $50/month per advisor to $100/month per advisor.

The broker-dealer said it has about 12,800 financial advisors.

The advisor affiliation fee was not raised for more than 20 years, according to LPL Financial.

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