The Welsh Wire: Bill Boersma of OC Consulting Group

When it comes to life insurance, business owners have to deal with a key factor of uncertainty — that they often don’t know what they don’t know. “Life Insurance is one of these things that is amazingly complex, it’s much more complex than people understand it to be,” says Bill Boersma, the founder, owner and president of OC Consulting Group, a fee-based life insurance consulting, audit and management practice located in Grand Rapids and operating nationally. “But the irony there, is it seems so simple. I take a premium, I get a death benefit. What could be more simple?”

Boersma shared his insights on life insurance in his interview with Sheri Welsh for The Welsh Wire podcast, sponsored by the Family Business Alliance.
“I [advised] a business owner where he just had a term policy, just had a simple term policy for business purposes,” Boersma said. “And it turns out that this gentleman from a health perspective was dramatically better today than he was back when he bought this insurance. So we ultimately put them back into underwriting, got a new policy issued for more money that lasts twice as long for half the premium he was paying.”

He told Sheri that life insurance can be full of surprises that, if not fully understood, can lead to devastating repercussions. “Somebody said, well, I don’t think I want this policy more, I’m going to get rid of it. And I said, don’t do that until you let me do a tax analysis. And I come back and said, well, if you do that, you get to pay ordinary income tax on $500,000 because that loan is forgiven and that’s forgiveness of debt, which under the Internal Revenue Code is going to be taxable.”

Listen to Sheri’s entire interview with Bill Boersma.

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