Corporate Benefit Strategies

Helping you plan today, for a secure tomorrow

Corporate Benefits Strategies does three things. They sell life insurance to businesses, insuring the key people, they design, develop, and implement self-funded health programs for larger employers, and they do estate planning for them. Key Person Insurance is when a company purchases a life insurance policy on certain employee(s), usually owners, pays the premiums, and is the beneficiary of the policy. In the event of the person’s death, the company receives the policy’s death benefit. This means taking the key people in a high-income group in the corporation and developing very special compensation programs for them leveraged with certain types of life insurance. The second thing they do is estate planning; mostly around specialty programs using life insurance to leverage money on a tax deferral basis. They use life insurance as a financial tool to leverage rate of return in taxes. There is not a huge group of people in the country who do that. They are very specialized and that makes them different.

“The thing that I spend a lot of my time doing is nonqualified deferred compensation,” says J. Brock O’Leary, Sr. – President. “What is that?  Taking a key person(s) in a company that is in the top 10-15% of compensation in a company and offer special retirement programs sponsored by the company. Similar to 401k and defined benefit pensions”. NQDC plans allow employers to create enticing compensation packages aligned with individual and company values, to attract highly qualified personnel. The plans can be customized to each executive, providing compensation in a variety of ways from performance-related bonuses to equity. At the same time, NQDC plans give the organization the ability to spread out the compensation expense, often over the span of years. This is called a “Golden Handcuff” for key employees.

“One company wanted to know what they could put together to “handcuff” these key employees to their company. We developed a program and wrote the support system for them where an officer who is invited into the program may get, depending on their ability and importance to the company, a monthly income up to $25,000 a month or higher paid over 15 years. If they leave the company, they forfeit it all. Imagine being told if you stay with this company until retirement, you will get paid $250,000 a year for 15 years. If something happens and you die, we pay that in a tax-free benefit to your family,” explains Mr. O’Leary.  

Mr. O’Leary started in the industry in 1967 and founded Corporate Business Strategies in 1998. “I had been in the lumber business. It changed and I had to figure out something else to do.  Insurance interested me so we started writing group health insurance for companies and then decided to start doing self-funded health insurance. We were the second company to administer claims in Mississippi and the first company to do a self-funded plan. We now have clients as far away as Colorado, but most of our clients are in Texas, LA, MS, FL, and AL. We are the only company in this area that is doing non-qualified deferred compensation using life insurance,” he adds. 

Corporate Benefits Strategies enjoys doing business in Meridian because of the size of the town.  “Great opportunities are available in the Meridian/Lauderdale County area. Look at what is going on in the business world and look for something no one else is doing that may have a high value to someone. Support your chamber. It’s a great way to meet people in the community.” 

Focusing on only two areas in the insurance arena insures quality service for all their clients.  Corporate Benefits Strategies - Helping you plan today, for a secure tomorrow.

Corporate Benefit Strategies
2705 Old N Hills St Suite A, Meridian, MS