It’s Not All About the Short Term

A little more than 120 days ago, we were celebrating Christmas 2019. Who could possibly have imagined that morning of 25th December, as we anticipated the far-too-big-a-dinner that lay ahead, that a handful of months later, we would be in the grip of a global pandemic that would have such a profound effect on our day-to-day life?

Businesses have taken the brunt of the Coronavirus storm and, sadly, some of those, big and small, will not survive. However, the majority will pull through and it will be inevitable that the ongoing legacy of the pandemic will influence future planning.

It’s far too early to be writing a history of the lessons learned but what it has demonstrated already is both our vulnerability to the unknown and our fragility due to lack of foresight.

Hopefully, the global community, in spite of its apparent fractures, will pull together and produce the conditions needed, as well as the vaccines, to ensure this once-in-a-generation crisis will be just that.

But crises do not need to be global to be catastrophic.

As individuals, we are woefully under-insured. And businesses are even more so.

What would the effect on your business be if the CEO/MD/FD/COO was to die in service or was side-lined for a lengthy period having been diagnosed with a critical illness? Would your lenders and/or creditors be supportive? What would be the effect on profits? How would cashflow be hit?

We have often dismissed such concerns as “That’ll never happen to me” but Coronavirus has shown us that it very much can.

Of course, cover for such eventualities comes at a price and I would be naïve to think that businesses under financial pressure now will be queuing up to spend money they don’t have.

But we will come through this (it is only the timescale that is in doubt) and it will be incumbent on all of us to ensure that future plans take account of the past (otherwise, as the famous saying goes, we will be doomed to repeat it). And when we do, businesses should be assiduously reviewing their insurance covers to ensure that catastrophes, be they global or local, are adequately covered.

To review your existing arrangements or have an initial discussion on what you should have in place, contact us on 0333 241 3350 or email pmurphy@richmondhousecs.co.uk

And, for now, stay safe.

Peter Murphy DipPFS

Benefits Adviser

07500 113811