In the life insurance marketplace, access is easy to find. Alignment is not.
Countless firms offer policies, products, and promises, but very few are structured to serve the complex needs of high-net-worth families and the professional advisors who guide them.
At Summit Legacy, we’ve built what we call an unfair advantage. Unfair not to our clients or partners, but to competitors constrained by corporate mandates and limited perspectives.
It’s an advantage built on three pillars: independence, selectivity, and collaboration.
Independence: Advocacy Without Compromise
When Gary Bottoms founded what would become Summit Legacy in 1987, he envisioned a firm that would serve clients the way he would want to be served. Honestly, objectively, and without outside influence.
That vision required independence.
Independence at Summit Legacy isn’t about being on our own but rather being free to work with others. We collaborate with attorneys, accountants, and investment advisors as part of a coordinated planning team, ensuring that life insurance supports the strategy rather than dictates it.
Unlike captive agents who represent a single carrier, Summit Legacy is a privately owned, independent brokerage firm. No insurance company pays our rent, funds our operations, or dictates our production priorities.
This structure eliminates the inherent conflicts that come from carrier ownership and allows us to operate with a fiduciary mindset. Every recommendation we make is driven by the client’s planning objective, not by a product quota.
Put simply, we work for the client, not the carrier.
We begin every engagement with the same question our professional partners ask: What are we solving for? From there, we design insurance solutions that support the broader strategy. Never the other way around.
Independence isn’t a marketing label for us but a commitment. It shows up in how we design, how we communicate, and how we stay engaged long after a policy is placed.
Selectivity: Many Carriers, One Standard
Independence grants us access; selectivity gives that access meaning.
Summit Legacy works with many leading life insurance carriers, but we maintain a simple, disciplined rule: we only recommend companies with a COMDEX score above a certain threshold.
The COMDEX, a composite of the four major rating agencies, provides an objective measure of an insurer’s financial strength and claims-paying ability. We require a score that places a company among the top 10% of all insurers, an essential distinction when policies are designed to perform across generations.
For the families and businesses we serve, financial stability isn’t a preference, it’s a prerequisite. The long-term success of an estate or succession plan depends on the staying power of the insurer as much as on the precision of the legal and tax design.
At Summit Legacy, we view life insurance not as a commodity, but as a distinct asset class that can provide tax efficiency, liquidity, and balance-sheet stability. That perspective demands the same level of due diligence an investment manager applies to a portfolio. Our clients deserve nothing less.
The Lion Street Advantage: Strength in Scale
Summit Legacy’s independence doesn’t mean isolation. We are a proud Member Firm of Lion Street, an invitation-only network of approximately 175 elite, independently owned firms that serve affluent families, entrepreneurs, and institutions.
Through Lion Street, we combine the entrepreneurial agility of an independent firm with the leverage and resources of a national platform. This partnership provides:
- Collective negotiating power with carriers, often resulting in improved pricing and underwriting outcomes.
- Access to specialized expertise across estate, business, and philanthropic planning disciplines.
- A collaborative peer network of advanced planners tackling complex, cross-jurisdictional, and cross-border cases.
As both a Member Firm and shareholder in Lion Street, Summit Legacy helps shape the direction of one of the most sophisticated professional communities in the industry.
When you engage Summit Legacy, you gain more than a team of experienced insurance professionals. You gain the collective insight, leverage, and innovation of a national network of elite advisors.
Built for Collaboration
Most professional advisors don’t need another salesperson or product rep in the room. They need a technical partner who understands advanced planning and can help translate strategy into structure. That’s the role Summit Legacy plays. Independent, collaborative, and focused on long-term outcomes.
We work alongside attorneys to model liquidity for estate plans, collaborate with CPAs to quantify tax impact, and coordinate with investment advisors to align policies with portfolio strategy. Independence allows us to do this without bias or constraint, ensuring that the insurance component enhances the plan rather than distorts it.
This collaborative mindset is why many of the nation’s top professional advisors view Summit Legacy as an extension of their own team. Our focus is on clarity, coordination, and client continuity. These values resonate across every profession serving the high-net-worth market.
Planning First. Product Second. Always.
From day one, Summit Legacy has followed a principle that guides every engagement: planning first, product second.
No two families or businesses are the same. Off-the-rack solutions rarely fit.
Independence allows us to tailor every structure, from buy-sell agreements and key-person coverage to liquidity and wealth-transfer strategies, to the unique contours of each client’s goals and ownership profile.
Independence lets us start with purpose, what the client and their advisory team are trying to achieve, and then engineer the insurance accordingly. This ensures every structure, from premium financing to business-owner coverage, aligns with the long-term objectives of the plan.
Because we aren’t tied to a carrier, we can stay with our clients through every chapter of their financial lives, reviewing, adapting, and advocating as circumstances evolve. Independence gives us the flexibility to adjust when markets, tax laws, or family goals change, ensuring the strategy remains sound over time.
Every engagement begins with listening. Independence gives us the freedom to ask better questions and the discipline to recommend only what fits.
The Real Advantage
For Summit Legacy, independence is not a marketing slogan. It’s a governing philosophy.
It’s what allows us to advocate without compromise, collaborate without bias, and deliver solutions that stand the test of time.
That’s our unfair advantage. And it exists entirely for the benefit of our clients and their advisors.
