When the source dries out

When the source dries out

The Expert remembers that financial death can be as difficult to face as the physical one – sometimes even more. 

By Otávio Rodrigues

A fan of the rodeo superstar Speed Williams, Justiniano Taveira is not only doing the individual loop tests this year due to surgery – on the animal, not on him. “It was an injury, the horse is now in physical therapy, we will only be back in 2019.” A baritone voice, he sang classical music for 16 years, but ended up hooked by more popular guys, such as Garth Brooks and Chris Stapleton, and by Brazilian root music, like that of the master Tião Carreiro. “I play viola caipira and guitar, I have a repertoire well aligned with those of these artists.” The accent was carved in Franca, in the interior of São Paulo, where he was born in 1980, later in neighboring Minas Gerais, Uberlândia, when he started his professional life, and now has a little bit of Ribeirão Preto, the headquarters of his company, Safe Investimentos, dedicated to personal and business financial planning, insurance, investments and business benefits consultancy.

“Look, as we say here, I am proud to be a hillbilly”, he makes it clear. “I really do, I don’t hide my accent much and I usually communicate well in the places in Brazil where we do business. I like that culture very much. ” As you might expect, clients like it too. “The captivating interior aura, yes, conveys reliability. The country man has this business of taking the floor, because, as illiteracy was very high in the past, he had to guarantee the deal on the mustache, there was no way to sign a contract. In an intuitive analysis, I think that this culture generates a certain credibility and empathy in our business. ” The “Melhores do Seguro 2017” award from Apólice magazine seems to confirm this idea.

Check below the best moments of our conversation with finance cowboy Justiniano Taveira.

Differences between life insurance

“Group life insurance is widely applied in terms of the benefit that the company wants to have for itself and for employees. When something happens to someone during working hours, the company has to bear the costs, maintain the financial planning of that employee and his family for a certain period, and all this results in a high financial expense. But group insurance comes at a low cost, almost insignificant. It is a great benefit for the company and, obviously, also for the employee, and the third company will pay – the insurance company. Individual life insurance covers and meets demands that most are unaware of. For example, coverages that indemnify absence from work or daily hospital stays. If a freelancer or entrepreneur is absent from the office, and he is the guy with the ideas, the company might miss some deadlines, it is difficult to measure the losses. Or in diagnoses of cancer, heart attack, stroke, among many others – there are insurances for this. Therefore, group life insurance and individual life insurance differ in terms of coverage. In the individual, all the protection that the person has acquired enters, whereas in group insurance the focus is on the protection of the company and that employee, and that is why it is seen more as a benefit for the latter, albeit in a simple way, as it covers a shorter period of time.”

Uncle Sam was a wise man

“I often say that Uncle Sam, very intelligent, created this masterpiece that is ‘time is money’. So, to turn time into money, just calculate how much you earn per month, how much your standard costs are, and how much, hypothetically, you have left to live. This will not lead you to know how much your life is worth, but how much your absence from work, or the absence of the income you generate working, can impact your family, your business – this is the kind of inflection that we do, seeking financial planning that is effective, efficient for the client. Okay, you have life insurance at the bank, which was offered by the manager, probably with good intentions, but which only covers six months or a year. What if you need it longer than that? How is it? It is this kind of inflection that we take to customers.”

Falling from the sky

“My sister, who is my insured, was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was able to pay her the benefit that covers this type of illness and she received R$ 220.000. She thought she would not use it, as she is a civil servant and has rights, but with travel, accommodation and other costs that she thought she would not have, this money ended up serving well. She did not experience any financial need. The insurance market is at an evolved stage, and I think there is a lack of information about it, because it covers many areas that are important to people’s standard of living. If something unexpected happens and someone needs to stop, the situation ends up generating enormous financial loss. And if, afterwards, it cannot produce more, the loss can be irreparable, it can jeopardize in a short period of time the heritage that took years to build.”

A cowboy on the table

“I’ve been part of the Million Dollar Round Table for three years (check out a report about this institution founded in the United States in our October content –with João Paulo Bottechia). And I’m already working on mentoring to classify my team’s professionals and make them members, too. It is something that enriches us a lot, that connects us to the culture of a country that has dealt with these issues for a long time, that deals with them naturally and with practicality, and that allows us to know new techniques to approach the same subjects, making our daily lives much easier.”

The awakening time

“Death is undoubtedly taboo. But we have a refined technique so that customers can reflect in a practical way. If you arrive naked and raw, the person’s primary reaction is to repel the conversation. So, we take time for this, there is a whole technique, a logic, we even use neuro-linguistic programming to be able to exercise this idea with the client. We call this moment “waking up”, because it is a matter of waking up to this reality, this inexorable fact that is death. Because it is taboo, yes. The big difference, and I develop this with the team, is the way we approach the client and make him reflect on it. This is our cat jump.”

Stroke is not an accident

“It is very important for the client to know the difference between natural death and accidental death when taking out insurance. Natural death comes from an internal cause, that is, it comes from a health problem, such as cancer, stroke or infarction. Accidental death comes from an external cause, for example, an automobile accident, a fall, a shot, lightning. There is some confusion with stroke, it’s not really an accident, it’s a physical problem.”

Inheriting tradition

“I was still quite a boy and I was already riding a horse on my grandfather’s farms, Justiniano Alves Taveira. Today, there is an avenue with his name on it, there are only shoe factories. He was one of the great coffee growers in the region, but besides tradition and prestige, the family did not inherit great heritage. I was raised in this business, among coffee and cattle farmers. But, as with many families, agrarian business did not go well, succession planning was poorly done and possessions were dilapidated. At a very young age, I started dividing my time between study and work, until I graduated in Administration. I started my first company at the age of 22. It was a representative of veterinary and agricultural products that served the houses of the branch in Franca. But I saw that there was no future and I gave up. I worked and learned a lot at CTBC Celular, later at Algar / Telecom and Prudential do Brasil until, in 2016, already with an MBA in Project Management and increasingly involved in the financial market, I founded Safe Finanças. It is an independent brokerage, representing several insurance companies, but always focused on individual planning, aiming at the concept of protection.”

Financial death

“Just as it is taboo to talk about the death of people, it is also not easy to talk about financial death. But, in general, the customer is usually attentive to listen to us. Financial death occurs when you stop being a source of revenue. You work and take a lot of money home every month and, due to an accident or illness, you have to stop for a period or you can’t get back to work, you stop generating income, but you still have expenses. This is very common.”

Superman syndrome

“I remember the case of a young doctor here in the region, a recognized professional, who was earning well and had a revenue line well above the cost line, who had been forming equity and maintaining financial reserves. One day, about four years ago, this doctor is closing his suitcase to go to Europe on vacation with his wife, he has a stroke and falls on top of his luggage, paralyzed. Disability due to illness. It is likely that he earned something like R $ 40 thousand per month as a self-employed person, receiving for consultations and surgeries, he had no contract with companies. And the revenue was zero. Let’s say that his monthly cost, which was R $ 8 thousand or R $ 10 thousand, in spending on tours, beers and day-to-day life, can now be around R $ 15 thousand, as it includes caregiver, treatment , physiotherapy, nurse … That is, he had at least R $ 30 thousand positive every month, now he has R $ 15 thousand negative. In those four years, instead of earning close to R $ 2 million, he lost about R $ 600 thousand. He’s alive, but he died financially. He was not my client, he was nobody’s client. What happens is that, in his 30s, doctor, in good financial condition, the guy thinks he is Superman. Everyone at that age, and who earn well, thinks they are immortal, that nothing will happen to them. Unfortunately, it happens. This is what we take to customers for a much lower cost than these R $ 600 thousand, since coverage would be around R $ 80 reais per month, that is, less than R $ 4 thousand over these four years.”

A glaring advantage

“To be entitled to receive insurance, just have a policy and pay regularly. In the event of a claim, the insurer makes an investigation, merely to prevent fraud, and enters the payment process, which takes about a month. And these coverages are offered at a very low and affordable price, the difference in prices between what is paid and what is received in the event of a claim is striking.”

The sword and shield

“It is as if we were war strategists: we look at the client and see where his shields and swords are. Like almost every human being, he is likely to be more interested in weapons and less in armor, protection. Achilles, the greatest warrior in the world, used a sword and shield – he never went to war without a shield. He could have died from an arrow, ended his life cycle and left no memory, but he was always with his shield. So, let’s see how the customer’s protections are doing. Even with a good heritage, a good recipe, these undesirable things always happen. If you are not prepared, you may lose much or everything that is due to the unexpected. For a low cost, we first protect, then look at what you can do in your financial planning. When I talk about the war strategist, that’s it.”

The risk of the eleven Neymars

“Neymar will always win more than the goalkeeper. It is a natural rule, the defender wins less than the attacker. But when I talk about financial planning and whenever I work with investment, I want to immediately understand your standard of living and make an armor, a defense. ‘Ah, but it doesn’t interest me …’, someone can say. But a team with 11 Neymares would lose, because he doesn’t play in the goal, he doesn’t know how to defend. To go ahead, you have to have a complete team, with goalkeepers, defenders and attackers.”

Avoiding the counterweight

“The Daily Hospitalization (IHL) insurance covers that unscheduled hospitalization. If someone programs cosmetic surgery, for example, this insurance does not cover. The intention is not to let you get caught in the counterweight, not to be caught by surprise. Christmas arrives, you eat the turkey that your aunt prepared, feasting at the table, your pancreas or your liver complain and, suddenly, you find yourself in trouble at the holidays, you will not be able to resume the routine and work for a time. This coverage is not to pay for the hospital, but to cover the loss due to personal injury or illness. You do what you want with the money – you can even pay the hospital. You don’t have to go to the bank to borrow money. The capital limit is R $ 1,000 per day and the hospitalization time limit is 365 days. The cost is very low. I have a contract in my hand: owner of a real estate company, 28 years old, coverage of R $ 500 per day from the fifth day of hospitalization: R $ 4.47 per month.”