When you run a successful business, it can be hard to look away from running your enterprise long enough to focus on your personal finances. In fact, you might have put off thinking about your long-term financial plan multiple times.
If you keep shunting your own financial wellbeing to the bottom of your to-do list, we could help make life easier.
In fact, our Director, Sarah Hogan, holds the AF2 Business Financial Planning Qualification as part of her Chartered status. As a specialist in planning for businesses, and a company director herself, Sarah has first-hand experience of the same challenges that you face.
Well-equipped to help business owners effectively plan for their future, here’s how we can help ensure you’ve taken appropriate steps to make the most of your hard work and achieve your long-term goals.
1. Separate business from personal
When you run a business, it’s easy to mix your personal and professional finances, blurring the lines between what’s yours and what belongs to the business.
Working with a planner can help you avoid this muddle.
We can help you to establish clear systems to keep business and personal money separate, and ensure you’re positioned to make the most of both cash streams.
2. Capitalise on tax efficiency
With clarity on both your business and personal finances, the next important consideration is tax-efficient financial planning.
There are a number of ways to withdraw money from your business tax-efficiently. We’ll work with you to ensure you’re making the most of any tax breaks, reliefs, and allowances.
Your planner can also help you understand tax-efficient ways to take income from your business.
This could include:
- Paying yourself a tax-efficient salary
- Taking dividends from your business shares
- Maximising pension contributions to make the most of tax relief.
Your circumstances will determine what’s appropriate for you. We’ll work with you to understand your situation and ensure you take the appropriate steps to maximise tax efficiency – for the business and yourself.
3. Protect against the unforeseen
As a business owner, it’s important to have the right safeguards in place.
With a full understanding of your business and personal situation, we might recommend:
- Key person insurance – to protect against the financial impact of losing a crucial team member due to critical illness, injury, terminal illness, or death.
- Relevant life cover – tax-efficient life insurance for employees and/or directors that pays a tax-free lump sum on death or diagnosis of a terminal illness.
- Shareholder protection – to help ensure surviving owners of a business can purchase the deceased owner’s share from the deceased owner’s estate.
- Business loan protection – paid to the business or directly to the lender, cover provides funds to repay commercial loans or mortgages should one of the business owners suffer a critical illness or death.
Whatever your circumstances, we’ll help you protect against unforeseen events or circumstances.
4. Plan for your dream retirement
Hopefully, you’ll already be paying into a personal pension, and making regular contributions towards your retirement fund.
Either way, we offer bespoke pension advice for company directors. From personal pensions to self-invested personal pension (SIPPs), we’ll help you find the right platform to maximise tax-efficient savings and achieve your long-term goals.
Not only can we ensure you take appropriate steps to ensure you’re saving for your retirement, but we can also support your employees. We work with a select number of pensions specialists who provide both auto-enrolment and larger company pension schemes.
On top of this, we can provide individual advice to your employees, and, where appropriate, deliver educational pension seminars in your workplace.
5. Make a smooth exit
Whether it’s early days or you already have one eye on the future, having a sound succession plan in place can be hugely beneficial.
There’s often a lot to consider when thinking about how you’ll exit your business, and having a trusted financial planner by your side could prove invaluable.
We’ll be by your side to help alleviate the stress of making difficult decisions, while also providing insight on elements of your business’s future that you may not yet have considered.
Working with us could also save you time and money, thanks to our knowledge of business sales and tax.
We’ll help you prepare a sound succession plan or exit strategy, so that when it’s time for you to hand over the reins, you can do so with confidence.
Get in touch
Whether you’re starting out on your entrepreneurial journey or are looking towards life beyond the business, we’re here to provide the support and help you need to succeed.
Email contactme@kbafinancial.com or call us on 01942 889 883 to find out more.
Please note
This article is for general information only and does not constitute advice. The information is aimed at retail clients only.
All information is correct at the time of writing and is subject to change in the future.
The value of investments and any income from them can fall as well as rise and you may not get back the original amount invested.
HM Revenue and Customs’ practice and the law relating to taxation are complex and subject to individual circumstances and changes which cannot be foreseen.
The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate tax planning.
Workplace pensions are regulated by The Pension Regulator.
Note that life insurance and financial protection plans typically have no cash in value at any time and cover will cease at the end of the term. If premiums stop, then cover will lapse.
Cover is subject to terms and conditions and may have exclusions. Definitions of illnesses vary from product provider and will be explained within the policy documentation.
Approved by The Openwork Partnership on 30/07/2025.