Premium Finance Life Insurance: What Happens When the Numbers Stop Working and How to Fix It (2026)
Reading Time: 15 minutesPremium finance life insurance programs illustrated between 2019 and 2022 were built on SOFR-based borrowing rates between 2% and 3.5%. Those same programs are now running at 6.2% to 7.5%, and the compounding math that made the arbitrage work at 2.5% is crushing policy economics at 7%. Loan balances are growing faster than cash values. […]
Professional Liability Insurance Cost 2026: What Mid-Market Companies Actually Pay by Industry
Reading Time: 12 minutesProfessional liability insurance — also called errors and omissions (E&O) — costs $5,000 to $75,000 per year for mid-market companies with $5M–$200M in revenue and 25–500 employees. That’s a long way from the $1,051 a year that Insureon reports as the small-business median, because that figure comes from solo practitioners and small firms buying $1M/$1M […]
Excess Liability Insurance: What It Costs, How Towers Work, and Why $1M in GL Isn’t Enough Anymore (2026)
Reading Time: 8 minutesExcess liability insurance costs about $600 a year for each $1 million of coverage for a small business, according to Insureon, and excess premiums commonly run 50% to 100% of the premium on the underlying policy. Mid-market companies pay more in total because they buy $10M to $25M of limits across several carriers, but they […]
Houston Commercial Insurance: What Mid-Market Businesses Pay, What They Need, and How to Choose a Broker (2026)
Reading Time: 8 minutesCommercial insurance for Houston businesses costs $15,000 to $250,000+ per year in total program premium, depending on industry, employee count, revenue, and how many coverage lines the operation requires. A 50-employee oilfield services company with $10M in revenue pays a fundamentally different premium than a 200-employee medical staffing firm with $40M in revenue — but […]
How Much Does an MRI Cost Without Insurance in 2026?
Reading Time: 6 minutesAn MRI costs $400 to $3,500 without insurance in 2026, with a national median around $1,325. But here’s the part almost nobody tells you: the exact same scan can cost five times more at a hospital than at an independent imaging center two miles down the road. The machine is identical. The images are identical. […]
Fiduciary Liability Insurance Cost: What Drives Plan Sponsor Premiums (2026)
Reading Time: 5 minutesFiduciary liability insurance premiums are driven less by plan size than by how fees are structured and how the fiduciary process is documented. Following years of excessive-fee litigation, insurers now treat fee levels and review processes as the top pricing factors — which means the 2026 DOL emphasis on documented process directly affects what plan […]
ERISA Bond vs. Fiduciary Liability Insurance: What Plan Sponsors Need (2026)
Reading Time: 7 minutesPlan sponsors routinely confuse two coverages that protect entirely different things: the ERISA fidelity bond and fiduciary liability insurance. The bond is required by law but narrow, covering only fraud and theft of plan assets. Fiduciary liability insurance is optional but covers the exposure that actually bankrupts fiduciaries: breach-of-duty claims. For context on what employees […]
Building a Documented 401(k) Fiduciary Process Under the 2026 DOL Rule
Reading Time: 5 minutesUnder the DOL’s March 2026 proposed rule, a 401(k) fiduciary’s legal protection now turns on a documented, repeatable evaluation process — not on whether an investment performed well. For plan sponsors, that makes a written fiduciary process the single most valuable risk-management asset they can build, and the one most are missing. Key Takeaways Process […]
Adding Alternative Investments to a 401(k): Fiduciary Duties Under the 2026 Rule
Reading Time: 5 minutesThe 2026 DOL rule and Executive Order 14330 opened the door for private equity, private credit, and other alternative assets in 401(k) menus — and with that access comes new fiduciary exposure. For plan sponsors weighing alternatives, the safe harbor offers protection only to those who can document a rigorous evaluation of each option’s fees, […]
Key Person Insurance and Buy-Sell Agreements: Funding Ownership Transfers (2026)
Reading Time: 8 minutesFor an established business with multiple owners, a buy-sell agreement is only as strong as the money standing behind it, and life insurance is the most common way to guarantee that cash is there the moment an owner dies or exits. Key person and buy-sell coverage are related but distinct: one reimburses the company for […]