Life Insurance: One key to creating wealth
By Vondez Phipps
Reporter-SKNVibes.com
 |
| Michael Martin, CEO Caribbean Financial Associates Inc. |
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – A leading financial specialist has said that the Caribbean society does not have a culture of creating wealth and usually does not pass on inheritance from one generation to another.
In a recent interview with Managing Director of Caribbean Financial Associates Inc., Michael Martin, he noted that many income-earners often die leaving their families without a proper idea of survival which sometimes results in broken families, disturbed children and shattered dreams.
Martin said without life insurance, when the income-earner dies, it is as if the entire family dies as well due the inability to continue in a life of comfort.
“Creating wealth and passing it on helps to break that cycle of poverty that somehow passes from one generation to another.
Life insurance can be used as a vehicle to facilitate the creation, preservation and the transfer of wealth to generations yet unborn.
“As an insured person, you have created an estate because when you die, the proceeds of the policy will pass from you to the successive generation.
It helps to keep your family under the roof that it has grown accustomed to, and may be used to allow children to go to university. It also ensures that there is still a steady income for the family, so you are producing income even though you are not around. It’s a fantastic thing! You preserve the wealth and by extension the family.”
Martin said the wealth may be used to cover existing debts including mortgages and school loans, and may lift the financial burden from the surviving family. He also indicated that life insurance helps to maintain buying power, which in turn benefits the economy.
“Life insurance filters down throughout the whole spectrum of the economy as it not only supports the family but it also keeps the nation on a whole on a good financial footing.”
“It is a good thing to create wealth, preserve it and pass it on to future generations because, at the end of the day, you cannot have a wealthy nation without wealthy individuals. If life insurance provides money, then it is a great thing for the economy because everyone can benefit: the individual, family, community and nation by extension.”
