Paula Steele

Spear’s Review

Paula Steele is a life insurance specialist at John Lamb Hill Oldridge, concentrating on policies to aid with inheritance planning for landed estates.

She told Spear’s, ‘We take out significant life insurance programmes for estates to enable them to pay their inheritance tax. Let’s assume that you have an estate. In your estate you’ve got £50 million of assets you’re going to have to pay tax on. That could be pictures or property, because the land will almost certainly be exempt. It’s a £20 million liability that will be triggered on your death. You can give the assets away, or take out insurance that will trigger on your death or the death of your spouse.’

When the IHT becomes due, the insurance payout is there to pay for it and keep the estate intact. Steele and her team work to produce a policy that will cover often very complex international assets with high values, within the cash flow limits of the client.