Thought for the day:

Insurance is always too expensive if you never make a claim.  If, however, it turns out that you collect benefits on your insurance, no one really cares how much you paid for it.

Gene Pastula

If you will read no further:

Most folks who ignore insurance in their practice do so at the risk of limiting their clients results.  Almost every day we get a call from an advisor looking for life or long-term care insurance for a client who is way too sick to qualify.  If we had asked that advisor three years earlier to recommend insurance he/she would have told us, “My client doesn’t need it”.  Most clients don’t need insurance.  But they sure want it when a claim is in sight.  If you use insurance in the portfolio like you use other instruments, stocks, ETFs, VAs, etc. it is amazing how much you can improve on the results your client will enjoy.

Thought for the week:

We have been hearing that the leading LTC insurers have all filed or will soon be filing for sex distinct rates.  Those that have not will likely face some anti-selection (assuming their rates are lower) that will certainly cause concern; prompting them to follow suit.
We’ve been told some will just raise rates for single women … while others will raise rates for all women.  In either case women will soon pay between 20 and 40 percent more than men for long-term care insurance as leading insurers move to sex-distinct pricing.  The issue has been reported widely in the media with no backlash, so I would anticipate that products will start being rolled out sooner rather than later.

You should be alerting your clients who have been “thinking about LTCi” and suggest they quit thinking and commence shopping to get in before rates are increase.  Women are often the drivers behind the purchase.  These rate increases will not only affect women living alone.  This applies to married couples as well.

I you would like to have a good news article to point folks to (for validation), here is the link to the AALTCI-placed news story in MarketWatch / The Wall Street Journal.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/avoid-coming-long-term-care-insurance-rate-increases-for-women-2013-01-23

Insurers paid over $6.6 billion in claims last year according to the Association, and women account for 65 percent of all new claims opened.  Dementia, cancer, fractures, stroke, osteoarthritis and hip fractures or replacements are the most frequent reasons women require long term care insurance benefits.

Call us for quotes and design assistance.  This is a good time to experience the full service of Westland’s new LTCi division powered by LTCi Partners.  Get quotes, comparisons and case presentation material; and when the client agrees to go forward, let us know and we call them and take the app for you.  The next thing you need to be concerned with is delivering the policy that will arrive in a couple of weeks and deciding what to do with the commission.