Most business owners plan carefully for growth — new hires, new markets, new revenue lines. Far fewer plan for what happens if they, or a co-owner, suddenly can't continue in the business. That gap is exactly what a buy-and-sell agreement is designed to close.

A buy-and-sell agreement is a contract between business owners that sets out, in advance, what happens to an owner's share of the business if they die, become permanently disabled, retire, or choose to exit. Rather than leaving those questions to be worked out in the middle of a crisis — often between grieving family members and remaining business partners who may have very different priorities — the agreement settles the terms while everyone is thinking clearly.

Two elements make the agreement work in practice. The first is the agreement itself: who buys, who sells, at what valuation, and under what circumstances. The second, often overlooked, is the funding mechanism — typically a life and disability policy on each owner, structured so that the funds needed to buy out a departing owner's share are available exactly when they're needed, rather than forcing a fire sale of business assets or an uncomfortable renegotiation of terms.

Without this in place, a surviving family member can end up as an unwilling co-owner of a business they have no interest in running, while the remaining owners are left without the capital to buy them out. Both outcomes tend to damage the business at the exact moment it can least afford it.

If your business doesn't have a buy-and-sell agreement in place — or hasn't reviewed one in a few years — it's worth a conversation with our Business Suite team to see how your business would actually hold up under this kind of test.

Building wealth rarely comes down to a single decision. It's usually the compounding effect of small, consistent habits, practiced over years rather than months. Here are five that tend to separate people who build lasting financial security from those who don't.

1. Pay yourself first. Rather than saving whatever is left over at the end of the month, set aside a fixed portion of every paycheque the moment it arrives. Automating this removes the temptation to spend first and save later — which, for most people, means never saving at all.

2. Know your number. A savings habit without a destination is hard to sustain. Whether it's a retirement age, a deposit on a home, or your children's education, having a concrete goal makes the discipline required to get there far easier to maintain.

3. Review debt honestly, at least once a year. Not all debt is equal — a home loan behaves very differently to revolving credit card debt. A yearly, unflinching look at what you owe, and what it's costing you, is one of the simplest ways to keep debt working for you instead of against you.

4. Protect before you grow. It's tempting to focus purely on investment growth, but wealth built without adequate life and disability cover is wealth built on a foundation that can disappear overnight. Protection should come first, growth second.

5. Revisit your plan as life changes. A financial plan built in your twenties won't fit your forties. Marriage, children, a new business, a change in income — each of these should prompt a fresh look at whether your financial plan still serves you.

None of these habits are complicated. What they require is consistency — and, often, a second set of eyes to help you stay accountable to them.

It's one of the most common assumptions in financial planning — "I'll get around to writing a will eventually." Yet dying without one, known as dying intestate, doesn't mean there's no plan for your estate. It means the law's default plan takes over instead of yours.

When someone dies without a valid will, their estate is distributed according to a fixed legal formula rather than their actual wishes. That formula doesn't know that you wanted to leave something to a favourite charity, that you intended for a stepchild to be included, or that you and a partner were never formally married. It applies the same rule to everyone, regardless of individual circumstances.

Beyond who receives what, intestate estates also tend to take longer to wind up. Without a nominated executor or clear instructions, the process of appointing someone to administer the estate — and the paperwork that follows — can add months of delay for the very people who are meant to be provided for.

A properly drafted will addresses far more than "who gets what." It lets you nominate an executor you trust, appoint guardians for minor children, make specific bequests, and structure your estate in a way that's tax-efficient for the people left behind. And because circumstances change, a will isn't a once-off task — it should be revisited after major life events like marriage, divorce, a new child, or a growing estate.

Our Fiduciary Services team can help you draft, review, or update a will as part of a broader estate plan — so your wishes, not a formula, decide what happens next.

Retirement planning is usually framed as a personal responsibility — and it is. But for employers, an unprepared workforce isn't just an employee problem. It shows up in the business too, in the form of employees delaying retirement, reduced productivity from financial stress, and higher demand on benefits budgets over time.

The good news is that employers are uniquely positioned to help close this gap, often more effectively than employees could manage alone. A well-structured retirement fund, paired with default contribution rates that are actually adequate rather than merely compliant, does more to move the needle than almost any amount of individual willpower.

Education matters just as much as the fund itself. Many employees under-contribute not out of carelessness, but because they've never had retirement planning explained to them in a way that connects to their actual life — their income, their family, their timeline. Workplace-based financial education sessions, run periodically rather than as a single onboarding event, consistently improve both engagement and contribution rates.

Finally, retirement readiness shouldn't be treated as a single milestone. Employees in their twenties need a very different conversation to employees in their fifties. Segmenting communication and benefits guidance by career stage helps make the message relevant, rather than generic.

A financially secure retirement isn't only a personal win for your employees — it's a measurable win for your business. Our Employee Benefits team works with employers to build retirement and benefits programmes that hold up to both tests.