Cross-Selling LTC Insurance Leads To Brighter Days Ahead

A much brighter future beyond what may be currently envisioned awaits property/casualty agents and brokers through cross-selling long term care (LTC) insurance. The sunny scenario that will unfold includes helping countless people and, in the process, realizing significant additional commission and renewal income.

The good news continues. Even if P/C agencies and brokerages don’t have the time to give LTC insurance due diligence, those with the required savvy will still be able to improve their bottom line on an ongoing basis. They’ll be able to do so through adding an LTC specialist to staff or through a shared commission arrangement with a nearby agency or financial services organization with expertise in marketing long-term care coverage.

Whatever the route chosen, building working relationships with CPAs, all of whom have clients in need of the product, will further enhance an already existing pathway to progress and profits. And, not-so-incidentally, it’s an avenue that will further pave the way to your agency becoming what an increasingly sophisticated audience of clients and prospects are now clamoring for in increasing numbers: a one-stop insurance/financial services center.

Most Americans age 65 and over can expect to spend some time in a nursing home, according to the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA) and the New England Journal of Medicine. Also, as indicated, long term care isn’t something that may only be faced by seniors and, tomorrow’s seniors, the baby boomers. Our organization’s research has unveiled the fact that 40 percent of the nation’s populace between the ages of 18 and 65 require long-term care.

The average annual cost of a nursing home stay has now reached $62,000, and it’s double that in major metropolitan areas. Home health care is often even more expensive.

Few people could afford those costs for very long—if ever. And when they can’t—and after all financial resources are exhausted—it often means that a family member is forced to give up a job and leave a promising career to become a caregiver to the person stricken through a devastating illness or major accident.

Nobody, in over two decades of selling long term care insurance, has ever told us they want that. And nobody wants to be an emotional and financial burden to others.

Yet, it happens … and it happens every day.

And it continues to occur despite the fact of continuing publicity about long term care and the advertising blitzes of some of the more than 100 insurers currently offering LTC insurance. Clearly, many more LTC marketers are needed to spread the word to a mostly misinformed public about their need for coverage.

Only through LTC insurance can a person:
• Preserve their financial independence.
• Conserve their estate and ensure an income, especially for the at-home or surviving spouse.
• Guarantee affordable quality care and services.
• Avoid having to go on public assistance (MediCal or other Medicare plans)

In addition, your clients and prospects should be informed that today’s LTC plans not only cover nursing homes, but care at home, and in adult day care centers and assisted living facilities. They also provide alternate plans of care, bed reservations, respite care, and once-per-lifetime elimination periods. Also, some plans offer lifetime benefits, single-pay, 10-pay and 20-pay elimination premium modes, as well as paid-up policy survivorship benefits that waive premiums for the surviving spouse upon death of the insured.

Yet another major selling point is that tax breaks are possible through the passage of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Through this legislation, those who purchase a qualified individual or employer-sponsored LTC plan may include LTC premiums, up to an amount determined by age, with other medical expenses if they itemize deductions on the federal income tax forms—subject to 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income. In most situations, benefits paid under the LTC policy will not be treated as income for tax purposes.

LTC insurance can be sold in many ways. They include one-to-one presentations, via worksite marketing (where it has become an increasingly popular product), through separate seminars for seniors and boomers (because their needs vary to some extent), and by utilizing the power of the press to announce the product and related seminars through news releases and ads. If you’ve been looking for just the right life-health product to add to your portfolio and build your book of business on an ongoing basis, your search has ended.

John Wane is president of American Independent Marketing, Yakima, Wash., which recruits and trains agents and conducts all-day LTC seminars. Contact him at (800) 672-7202 or info@goldencare.com.

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