Key person cover, director pensions, corporate investment, succession planning and employee benefits, addressed in the order a business can actually absorb them.
A business does not fail because its owners chose the wrong product. It fails because a dependency was left unaddressed while attention was elsewhere.
The same hierarchy that governs a household governs a company, in a different order and with different instruments. Cash flow before continuity. Continuity before reward. Reward before extraction. Extraction before exit.
We advise owners and directors within that sequence, and we say plainly when a decision is being taken out of turn.
Across decades of advising Irish businesses — from owner-managed firms to professional partnerships and family enterprises in transition — we have observed that the most consequential financial errors are almost never errors of analysis. They are errors of sequence. A director’s pension funded to the cap before key person protection has been arranged. A succession plan considered for the first time when the owner is already six months from intended retirement. An employee benefit pack extended before the cash architecture beneath it has been tested.
Where a tier sits outside our regulated remit — banking facilities, commercial general insurance, the legal architecture of share transfers, the detailed mechanics of corporation tax — we say so, and we coordinate with your accountant, solicitor and banker accordingly.
Foundation stack
— The ground beneath the business.
Before any insurance policy is taken out, any pension contributed to, any capital expenditure approved, a business must understand the geometry of its own cash. Cash flow is to a business what oxygen is to a person — without it, every other decision becomes academic.
We do not manage cash flow itself. That is properly the work of the finance director, the company accountant and the company’s bankers. Where we engage at this tier, it is to ensure the affordability of the upper tiers is anchored in the cash reality below. An employee benefit pack the business cannot sustain through a soft quarter is not a benefit pack. It is an exposure.
For businesses that have built reserves materially above what the trading cycle requires, the question becomes one of deployment. Cash on deposit is rarely the optimal long-term home for surplus reserves.
The value of your investment may go down as well as up.
If you invest in this product, you may lose some, or all, of the money you invest.
This product may be affected by changes in currency exchange rates.
— Paddy Keenan MSc QFA, Principal & Senior Financial Consultant
Could the business meet six months of fixed outgoings without drawing further on its banking facilities?
When was your working capital reserve last sized against your actual trading cycle, not the one assumed five years ago?
If your reserves materially exceed what the trading cycle requires, is the surplus deployed deliberately, or sitting on deposit by default?
Foundation Stack
— Insuring the people, the borrowings and the obligations on which the business depends.
A trading company’s most valuable assets rarely appear on its balance sheet. The relationships, expertise and commercial drive of the individuals who built the business — and the agreements between those individuals that govern its future — represent a concentration of value that standard commercial insurance does not protect.
This is the tier on which we engage most often with Irish business owners, because in our experience it is the tier where the gap between what exists and what is needed is widest.
Protection here begins not with the people but with the obligations they have personally underwritten. Where a business borrowing carries a personal guarantee — and on the Irish balance sheet, most do — the conversation must begin there.
— Barry Oliver LIB QFA EFA, Principal & Founder
If you, or any director, ceased to be available tomorrow, who is contractually responsible for the bank facility — and is that obligation insured?
Have you read the shareholders’ or partnership agreement against the protection cover currently in force?
If your most important non-replaceable colleague did not arrive at work tomorrow, what would change in the business, and what would it cost?
Foundation Stack
— Clearing the path before the journey begins.
Debt is not, in itself, a corporate failing. Discipline around the cost and the structure of it, however, is a precondition of every tier above. A business carrying high-cost debt while contributing to director pensions has accepted a guaranteed cost in pursuit of a return that may or may not exceed it. The arithmetic, while uncomfortable, is not in dispute.
We do not provide commercial banking advice. The work at this tier sits primarily with the finance director, the company accountant and the company’s bankers. Where we engage, it is to ensure the cost of debt service is consistent with the affordability of the upper tiers, and to coordinate where insurance secures a borrowing.
For businesses in a growth phase, debt is not the only route to capital.
— Paddy Keenan MSc QFA, Principal & Senior Financial Consultant
Is any business debt costing more than the post-tax return on capital you expect from the use of those funds?
When did you last formally review your banking facilities against the alternatives in the Irish market?
If growth capital is required, have you considered the equity route alongside debt?
Growth Stack
— The benefit pack as competitive position.
Once the foundation tiers are in order, the question of how the business compensates and retains its people becomes the most consequential single discipline for sustained competitive position. The benefit pack is not a compliance exercise. It is the firm’s offer to the labour market it competes in — and, properly designed, the most tax-efficient route to compensating employees beyond gross salary.
Auto-Enrolment is live Every Irish employer must assess every employee against the Auto-Enrolment eligibility criteria and enrol qualifying employees not already covered by an existing occupational arrangement. Employers without a qualifying scheme are defaulting their workforce into the State system. An existing, well-designed occupational scheme is the discipline that retains the employer’s control over fund choice, contribution levels and member experience.
The value of your investment may go down as well as up.
If you invest in this product, you may lose some, or all, of the money you invest.
Is your business compliant with the Auto-Enrolment obligation, and is your existing scheme designed to satisfy it without defaulting employees to the State system?
What is the rate of regretted staff turnover in your firm, and what is it costing in recruitment, onboarding and lost productivity?
Does the benefit pack you offer match what your competitors in the same talent market offer?
Growth Stack
— Retail Master Trusts, PRSAs and Self-Directed Pensions.
For the owner-director of a trading company, the correct pension is not principally a retirement vehicle. It is the most powerful mechanism available under Irish tax law for extracting value from a profitable business, growing that capital inside a tax-privileged wrapper, and converting it into a retirement income that reflects the enterprise you have built.
Three compounding reliefs operate together: corporation tax relief on the company’s contribution, tax-free growth inside the fund, and a substantial tax-free lump sum at retirement subject to Revenue limits. The funding limits for directors are materially more generous than the age-related employee limits.
The IORP II deadline has passed Single-member Executive Pension Plans and standalone self-administered arrangements ceased to accept new tax-relievable contributions following the IORP II governance deadline of 22 April 2026. Any director still holding a pre-2021 scheme is no longer building relievable provision through it, and contributions paid into a non-compliant arrangement do not attract corporation tax relief. If that describes your position, the migration cannot be deferred further. We open this question in every relevant engagement.
The value of your investment may go down as well as up.
If you invest in this product, you may lose some, or all, of the money you invest.
— Barry Oliver LIB QFA EFA, Principal & Founder
If you held a pre-2021 Executive Pension Plan, has the migration been completed — or is the scheme now suspended on tax-relievable contributions?
Have you funded your director pension to the maximum the company can support this year, and the previous five?
Is your projected fund value at retirement above or below the Standard Fund Threshold?
Growth Stack
— How value created inside the business reaches the owner.
The fifth tier builds the director pension. The sixth addresses the wider question of how value generated inside the business converts into value held by the owner outside it, and how that value continues to compound through a phased transition out of executive responsibility.
The right answer is rarely a single instrument. It is a deliberate blend, modelled against the owner’s marginal tax position, the company’s profitability, and the long-term horizon of the business itself.
For most owner-managed businesses, the cleanest exit from operational responsibility is not a cliff edge but a graduated step-down: the owner reduces hours, the senior team takes more authority, and the pension begins to do the work it was funded for.
The value of your investment may go down as well as up.
If you invest in this product, you may lose some, or all, of the money you invest.
The income you earn from this investment may go down as well as up.
Of every euro of corporate profit, how much eventually arrives in your personal hand, and how much goes to tax?
Have you modelled the comparative outcomes of salary, dividend and pension extraction over a ten-year horizon?
Is your post-retirement income strategy built around a Self-Directed ARF, a managed ARF, or a phased combination — and is the choice deliberate?
Legacy
— The final expression of the plan.
At the seventh tier the question shifts from operation to transmission. The business assembled across a working life does not, in itself, secure its passage either to the next generation or to a buyer. Without structured intent, even the most carefully built enterprise can be materially diminished by tax, by family complexity, or by the simple absence of a documented plan.
Three Irish tax reliefs operate together to determine how much of the business’s value reaches the owner’s hand on disposal, or the next generation’s on inheritance. Each carries qualifying conditions. The planning lies in structuring early enough that all three can apply.
The single most under-prepared element of an exit is the buyer’s due diligence. Hidden key-person risk, undocumented client relationships and incomplete records routinely drag valuations down at the precise moment they should be holding firm. The planning lever sits years before the transaction.
The value of your investment may go down as well as up.
Our role at this tier is the financial-planning coordination: the director pension drawdown that begins as the salary ends, the Section 72 cover that funds the eventual tax, the personal investment of consideration received, and the coordination with the next generation where a family transfer is the route.
The legal mechanics of the transfer sit with your solicitor. The detailed tax structuring sits with your tax adviser. The running of the sale or buy-out process sits with the corporate finance team.
— Barry Oliver LIB QFA EFA, Principal & Founder
Is the exit you intend documented, or only intended?
Have you quantified the tax exposure on a third-party sale and on a family transfer, and modelled the reliefs against both?
If a transaction were to commence in the next twelve months, do you know who the four professionals at the table would be?
Speak with our team and get clear, independent advice tailored
to your personal or business goals.