Providing Insurance Is the Service that Built Our Outstanding Reputation
Our History of Honesty and Integrity Sets Us Apart
The Ross Companies is more than a life insurance broker, but insurance is at the core of our business. Sometimes this creates a perception problem for us, and it’s something we’d like to address.
One of the problems in this industry is that not all agents or brokers are honest or operate in a client’s best interests. Because compensation for selling insurance is derived from commissions, there are operators who have and will sell unnecessarily large policies and do other unsavory things. These shenanigans have tarnished the entire industry, which is unfortunate considering how important things like life insurance can be.
The Ross Companies has always operated with honesty and integrity. While we are successful in the insurance industry – both Arnold Ross and his son and successor Norman are members of the Million Dollar Roundtable – our ethics have always been that we operate in a fiduciary capacity for our clients. Yes, we will receive compensation, usually from commissions, but we want our clients to understand the value they are receiving from us.
The way we view life insurance is as an important tool that can be used to solve a variety of financial problems for the wealthy and affluent. The kind of problems that people in the income categories we serve – from the affluent and wealth to the very rich – have to consider how insurance can be creatively used for estate tax planning, succession, buy outs, preservation of assets, as part of an executive compensation package, or even as collateral for loans.
To provide a more concrete example, we’d like to discuss our fictional client, Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones was a corporate executive who amassed a great deal of stock during his time running several successful corporations. He retired young, and traded these shares for assets that produced a significant annual return – enough to keep him and his family quite wealthy for generations. Mr. Jones wanted to make additional investments but would have needed to liquidate the very productive assets to do this. Not wanting to jeopardize his well-crafted income stream, he instead created an irrevocable trust that held a very large life insurance policy. This policy produced income and could also be used as collateral for the loan. This enabled Mr. Jones to make his additional investments while not liquidating nor risking the fund he’d built for himself and his family.
Finding solutions to problems that enable our clients to continue their lives and lifestyle, like what we did to help Mr. Jones, is what we view as the core of The Ross Companies business. While this is an example, there are many creative ways for us to join your financial team to craft tremendous solutions to the kind of problems we can often foresee on behalf of our clients.
For more than 90 years, The Ross Companies has been advising clients on how to resolve complex financial problems using insurance and other tools. These problems can include estate taxes, succession, buy outs, preservation of assets, or executive compensation. Our long history informs our thinking, and while many situations may be similar, we have learned well that each solution must be unique to the circumstances and individuals being served.