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Directors and employees with highly specialist skills or knowledge are key employees of the companies they work for. To lose one as a result of a critical illness or death can be damaging to the business. That is why taking out Key Person insurance to protect the company is a wise move.

Key Person insurances can provide several benefits. These can include:

• Paying the costs of a temporary replacement
• Meeting the costs of recruiting a permanent replacement
• Covering the cost of death or incapacity of a key member of staff.

Directors' or partners' share agreements may provide for the remaining directors to purchase the shares of other shareholding directors should they die. However there is a risk that the remaining directors may not have sufficient funds to hand when a fellow director passes away unexpectedly.

One solution to this is to take out life cover as a source of funding.

To arrange such cover requires the understanding and agreement of all concerned. It will also require some careful calculations to determine how much cover is required. However, it will be a comfort to all directors or partners of a business to know that their own or a colleague's death will leave the other directors with sufficient support to carry out the terms of their shareholders' agreement.

Directors may prefer to establish a separate pension plan from that of their employees. The reasons for this are that the term of their employment may be a fixed number of years, their tax position may be more complicated than other employees, or they may prefer to set up a form of self administered scheme more suitable to their circumstances.

Directors and partners may also wish to leverage their company pension scheme at some stage to raise funding for the business. This may be a more tax and cost efficient way of funding the acquisition of commercial property.

It's when you need to make a claim that you realise just how wise investing in health and medical insurance can be.

If you're unable to work because of illness or injury, under an employers group sickness scheme (Group IPI) salary is continued but is subject to tax and NI in the usual way.

The maximum amount of income you can replace through insurance is broadly the after-tax earnings you have lost, less an adjustment for state benefits you can claim. As with all insurance, it is important that you have the right type of policy which provides all that you need it to do for you.

Long-term income repayment policies usually come into play between the time when your employer stops paying sick pay, and when you collect your pension.

Shorter-term policies tend to be used to protect a mortgage, bank loan or other payment. These usually commence within a few weeks but stop entirely after 12 months or 24 months. Short-term policies often include unemployment and redundancy, unlike longer-term income protection cover which does not.