Business uses of life insurance

So-called " business " or " commercial " life insurance has
assumed large proportions only within the present decade.
While the primary purpose of life insurance is to protect the
family against the loss of the income-producing capacity of the
breadwinner, it is becoming clear that the business enter-
prises of the country likewise have need of protection against
the loss of the valuable lives that give them vitality and suc-
cess. During the last few years the business world seems to
have discovered this fact, and as a result an enormous amount
of insurance has been written on the lives of business men
who have had in mind chiefly the stabilizing of their business
through the establishment of better credit relations and the
procurement of protection against the loss through death of
those most valuable to its success. So large is the volume
of business insurance becoming, and so rapid is its increase
that there is good reason to believe, as one writer on the sub-
ject recently stated, that " the time is fast coming when the
life-insurance policy will be almost as integral a part of cor-
porate and copartnership structure as are the charter, the
bond, the stock certificate, and the articles of copartner-
ship." * The business uses of life insurance afford a boundless
field for study and thought, because there are few men, indeed,
who do not at some time face a business situation, the solution
of which will be made simpler and less hazardous through the
medium of some kind of life insurance.

Close Relationship Between the Home and Business.
Business life insurance should particularly appeal to a busi
ness man when it is shown that in nearly all instances there is
a very close relationship between his home and the business
in which he is engaged. So close is this relation that a
policy taken for the special conservation of the business may
often prove even more valuable than a policy taken out for
the direct protection of the family. The latter policy can
seldom do more than alleviate in a measure the financial
injury caused by the death of the income-producer, while the
former may be the means of successfully continuing in opera-
tion the business of the deceased. Had not the former policy
been taken out the business might have failed or declined.
The family policy usually assures the continuance of a portion
only of the insured's income during life, while the business
policy, since it conserves the efficiency of the insured's business,
may be instrumental in bringing about the continuation
of a much larger income, viz., the income from a successful
business.

Moreover, the owner of a business, generally speaking, con-
ducts the same primarily with a view to supporting a home,
thus again showing that the welfare of the home and the wel-
fare of the business are so intimately related as, generally
speaking, to be inseparable. On the one hand the advantages
of family insurance as discussed in the preceding chapter,
such as freedom from worry, increase in initiative, etc., will
produce a very wholesome effect upon the welfare of the
insured's business, and business success means, as a rule,
family happiness and contentment. On the other hand busi-
ness adversity practically always means family adversity, and,
therefore, business insurance which protects the business
against disaster is in reality also family insurance since it
preserves the family's interest in the income derived from that
business.
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Two general benefits of life insurance