Farm Succession Planning

They are your neighbors and friends, people who know that money is always a rare commodity, so setting priorities and communicating the potential consequences is critical.

When tragedy strikes the business, or your family personally there is always a price tag. Where will the cash come from to deal with it?

There are only three possibilities that I know of.

Money that has already been earned and saved, money that can be borrowed, or your insurance agent’s check – money that does not have to be paid back and does not deplete your savings or investments.

Naturally there is a fourth possibility for raising money, sell assets, not something that is likely to take the farm in the direction you want it to go.

Farm insurance agents who know their customers can help them understand the risk to benefit relationship between paying insurance premiums and self-insuring.

Let’s face it, some risks you can and should self-insure with your own resources, risks that you can pay for out of pocket don’t warrant buying insurance to cover, while others, if uninsured could cause the farm and everyone on it to collapse if they are not covered properly.

Selecting the right insurance agent is a serious decision in deed, one that can have a more far reaching impact on your farm’s success than anyone who can not accurately predict the future can possibly know.

And unless I miss my guess it is one that almost always comes down to your gut instinct, a matter of personal trust.

The right agent is one who will reach out to their home office, collaborate with their peers, and are willing to tell you so if there is a better solution for you that they don’t have.

In other words it’s not how much they know as it is how much they care, about you and your family business. It seems to me that the ideal insurance agent is one who’ll invest the time required to better understand you and your priorities.

They’ll make that investment in your farm whether you buy insurance from them today or not. They known that in the long run they’ll be paid – if they are always willing to give of themselves before feeling a need to receive from you.

Should it be a rookie agent or a seasoned veteran? Does that really matter? It depends.

Let’s say they are in expert in insurance and financial services, is that to your advantage or not? Maybe both.

It’s good because they have already helped other people like you and they have seen a lot of “brilliant” ideas that did not work in real life over time.

Or bad if their previous experiences have turned a mind open to suggestions into one that looks only at their own knowledge.

What about professional designations, whether or not they are well know among your peers, or simply right out of their company’s new agent school?

I don’t think it really matters, as long as they feel right to you. It is true that new agents fail and seasoned veterans retire.

In the meantime you’ll be doing business with someone who cares about your success.

And that is critically important if you are involved in the process of  “Passing Down the Farm.

For many farmers it is the cash their farm insurance agents bring to the funeral that has more to do with the farm’s long term success than anything else.

Farm insurance agents bring cash that does not have to be repaid to anyone, ever. They are the only professionals who do not submit an invoice for their time when your farm is dealing with a financial loss or crisis.

If you are serious about your farm’s long term success, or if you are a professional involved in farm succession planning – or an farm association executive, click the link below and review our FREE farm succession system.

You’ll be glad you did.