DIBroker East / Eskra & Associates

Disability Insurance For Life

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Disability Insurance Sales Leaders Celebrate Record Setting Year

  by  DIBroker East

Congratulations to Sales Leaders Tim Murray, Clarke Morris and Todd Forney for an excellent 2016. It may seem a little late in the year for 2016 congratulations, but on Friday May 19th DIBroker East-Eskra & Associates celebrated with our top three sales partners in the Big Easy. We had an excellent dinner at Arnaud’s in the French Quarter in New Orleans on Friday night and the next day did a culinary bike tour of the Bywater with Confederacy of Cruisers (they took their name from the now classic Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole for our literary fans).

2016 and the start of 2017 have proven to be a time of upheaval in the individual disability insurance—with MetLife exiting the business and with significant product changes at a number of carriers, against the backdrop of changes promulgated by DOL and the questions surrounding the ACA. Despite this upheaval, Tim, Clarke and Todd have continued to prosper and even thrive.

Tim and Clarke have been regular qualifiers over many years for our reward trips. Todd qualified for the first time this year and we were thrilled to have him and his wife Diane join us for the first time.

2017 Sale Partners Reward Trip–Arnaud’s French 75 Bar

Between the three of them they represent over 75 years of experience in the disability insurance industry. They each have a somewhat different approach to recruiting and training brokers, but each of them has shown an ability to adapt to a changing industry and a commitment to service that is unparaled in the industry.

We congratulate them on their success last year and wish them the best for 2017.

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A Great But Little Known Free Business Valuation from the Principal Financial Group—by Michael J. Eskra, III

  by  DIBroker East

MichaelRecently a good producer by the name of Brock Jolly came to me for help with a group of Podiatrists he works with.  Brock’s primary company is Mass Mutual, but Brock shops every case for his clients to find the best fit.  His clients all had personal disability insurance and were now looking to insure their business. More specifically, they wanted to fund the buy-sell agreement their attorney had recently drafted for them.

 

The four partners all had equal ownership interest in the business.  When Brock approached me about the case my first questions were “how much are they looking to insure the business for” and “what is the business worth”?  They did not know the answer.  Without some idea of what the business is worth, I was unable to prepare options for them and Brock was also unable to prepare options on the life insurance side which they also requested from him.

 

At that point I told Brock about the Business Valuation that Principal offers at no cost to the client.  He loved the idea and his clients loved that they would not have to spend the $5,000 to $10,000 that accountants typically charge for such a valuation. Although this process may not meet all the needs that arise when seeking a business valuation, it more than served the purpose of helping these clients decide on how much coverage they needed.

 

I had Brock collect the last three years of business returns, a current balance sheet, and a profit and loss statement and sent them to Patti at Principal Life.  Patti is a CPA and a terrific resource for valuing small businesses.  She is very knowledgeable and provides an excellent product. The process took about 3 weeks. The end result was a first class, very professional report.  Principal valued the business five different ways to give them some options.  The clients were thrilled with the report and of course loved the cost.  They purchased both life and disability insurance policies to fund the liability created by their buy-sell agreement.

 

At DIBroker/Eskra & Associates we handle cases like these every month if not more.  To date the clients have always been satisfied with the valuation report.  Sometimes they go forward with insuring themselves and sometimes they buy policies to cover the risk, but they always leave happy….

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