Every company has a few people whose absence is not an inconvenience but a business risk: the owner-manager, the technical director, the colleague who carries the key accounts. Executive extra tiers were born for this situation: the same group contract, with higher sums and a wider range of covers where the stakes are higher too.
- The executive tier typically means higher insured sums and a wider range of covers – within one contract, with no separate administration.
- Losing a key person burdens the company as well: enhanced protection is care and risk management at once.
- The system works when a written, consistent rule says who belongs on which tier.
The key-person logic
A key person is someone whose knowledge, relationships or decision-making role cannot be replaced at short notice. Their absence is a double burden: lost income for their family, operational risk for the company. The higher sums of the executive tier protect the family first – but indirectly the company as well, because a settled background gives the organisation time to adapt even in the hardest situation. It is also a message: the company takes particular care of those who carry responsibility.
What does the executive tier typically contain?
Protection widens in two directions. In sums: the death and accidental disability amounts are typically multiples of the staff tier – salary-proportional thinking is a good compass here as well. And in the range of covers: critical illness cover and a wider set of health elements are frequent parts of executive packages. The exact composition differs from company to company – the planning considerations are taken in turn in our article on designing limits and tiers.
Discretion and policy: the delicate balance
Different tiers do not create tension by themselves – the lack of rules does. The classification principle should be written and consistent; the sums belonging to other tiers can remain discreetly handled data – but every insured person must know the insured sums that apply to them. That way a new joiner lands on the right tier automatically, and the team sees the system as fair – because the principles are public; only the numbers are not.
Entry and assessment at high sums
Group cover typically starts without individual medical underwriting – one of the great advantages of the genre. At enhanced executive sums, however, the insurer may typically ask for a declaration or an above-limit assessment. Important to know: such declarations go directly to the insurer – the employer never sees health data. That discretion is not only a legal requirement but also the condition of the executive circle's trust.
Who is it for – and two misconceptions
The first misconception: “this is a big-company genre.” Quite the opposite: in a family SME the key-person risk is often even more concentrated – there, truly everything rests on one or two people. The second: “the executive tier is secret favouritism.” With a written policy the opposite is true: transparent principles, discreet sums. We show the typical structure of staff and executive tiers on the Packages page – at the quote stage we shape the tiers to the company's real roles.
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