Northline Packaging
A worked pass through the fact-finder so you can see the order of the conversation before you run a company of your own.
The company in front of you
Northline is a closely held packaging manufacturer. It keeps about $2 million in the operating account because the owner does not want to be tight on cash. The floor they will actually defend is $500,000. The rest is idle. It earns about 5% pretax and is taxed every year. The operating president is difficult to replace. There is no buy-sell funding in place.
You are not being asked to design a policy. You are being asked whether a measured $100,000 a year — for ten years — is worth comparing with leaving that same dollar in the reserve.
What you enter
Corporate domicile: Virginia (statutory 6%). Federal left blank, so 21%. Pretax reserve yield 5%. Revenue growth 6%. No ongoing cash add. No pasted illustration — the conservative placeholder is in use.
Covered person, recognition only: Alex Rowe, Biological Male, date of birth 12 April 1978, general health Good, 100% of the annual amount, tagged to key-person. No medications. No conditions. Secondary goals tagged: reserve efficiency and key-person protection.
How to read it
Read in this order. Do not start with the after-tax race.
- Operating Liquidity. Cash stays first-line. Accessible policy value is 80% of cash value. Together they are liquid operating capital. On this case, cash never touches the $500,000 floor. No liquidity flags fire. Year-one cash mix is about 97%; year twenty is about 57% — still well above the 25% informational flag.
- Strategy Significance. At year ten, accessible policy value is about 40% of remaining operating capital — a solid representative balance, not a grade. High significance later would mean the strategy is working as intended, not that you should dial it back.
- Comparison. After-tax, the modeled policy first exceeds the reserve alternative in year 7. By year 20 the modeled advantage is about $596,000. That comparison values accumulation only. It does not count the death benefit or the secondary goals.
Snapshot
Rounded. Placeholder cash value, not an illustration.
| Year | Policy (AT) | Reserve (AT) | Liquid cash | Cash vs floor | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $87,000 | $100,000 | $1,974,000 | $1,474,000 | 3% |
| 5 | $522,000 | $539,000 | $1,861,000 | $1,361,000 | 19% |
| 7 · crosses | $799,000 | $783,000 | $1,798,000 | $1,298,000 | 28% |
| 10 | $1,286,000 | $1,185,000 | $1,695,000 | $1,195,000 | 40% |
| 20 | $2,302,000 | $1,706,000 | $2,441,000 | $1,941,000 | 34% |
Effective tax on the reserve yield is 25.74% (21% federal + 6% Virginia, deductibility formula — not 27%). After-tax reserve yield is 3.71%. Year-one modeled cash value is $87,000 on $100,000 of premium — deliberately conservative.
What this case is saying
A $100,000 annual amount does not crowd Northline’s cash floor. Liquidity remains cash-first. By the middle of the horizon the modeled policy has crossed the reserve alternative on accumulation alone, and the company has coverage the cash never provided. That is enough to refer. It is not enough to bind a design. Imprimis Financial takes the illustration and the structure from here.
Reproduce it
Open the fact-finder. Choose Restore demo. You should see crossover year 7, significance about 40% at year 10, and an empty alert list. If you then raise the annual amount to $400,000, the governors fire around year 5 — cash below the floor, cash-mix below 20%, and a severe funding alert. Those flags do not block a request. They tell Imprimis Financial to consider a lower amount over a longer period.
If a company you advise looks like Northline — surplus cash, a floor they can name, a key person, no product conversation yet — run their numbers the same way and send the proposal request. The company is not emailed.