Long Term Care Insurance Leads – Knowing What They Are Looking For
If you work in the insurance field providing long term care insurance, you almost certainly want to keep your business growing. Most insurance professionals do, after all. However, there’s more to it than just jumping on the first lead you encounter. You need to know what your long term care insurance leads want out of their policies, and what’s best for them.
After all, just selling your clients the most expensive policy you can isn’t going to make you any friends. You have to find the one that’s best tailored to their wants and needs. Let’s take a look at what long term care insurance clients should be looking for and the best ways to help your leads get the kind of policy that will work for them.
Our overall increase in life expectancy also means that long term care in a nursing home, assisted living facility, or in our own homes is becoming more common. Many people can expect to need this kind of care, but it’s extremely costly, with nursing home care averaging about two hundred dollars per day.
With an average stay of two and a half years, that can be well beyond the budgets of many retirees. Since government programs offer very minimal coverage for long term care, it’s important for anyone expecting to need this kind of care to plan ahead. Long term care insurance meets this need and provides coverage for long term care of many different kinds, including nursing homes and home care. However, all policies aren’t created equal.
Long term care insurance leads over sixty-five years of age may not be aware of how costly their premiums can be, for instance – as much as a thousand dollars per year in annual premium. This can be daunting for many – the majority of leads for long term care insurance are near or at retirement age. However, the people who can benefit most from these policies are younger people. They can lock in lower rates over the course of their lives, since insurance companies regard them as a lower risk. One thing that probably all insurance leads have in common is that they’re interested in the best coverage for the lowest price. It’s important to help your leads understand that the earlier they start with this kind of insurance, the better their rates will be overall.
Features to go over with our long term care insurance leads include the services covered in the policy, the duration of benefits and when those benefits begin and end, how long the elimination period is (the length of time that policyholders must have their policy before benefits will be paid), any disability thresholds which apply, and the maximum benefit amount. It will be important to make sure that your leads understand the pros and cons of decreasing benefits to get a lower premium. Whether or not the policy will require that physical and cognitive disabilities be independently verified by tests should also be covered.
Many people interested in long term care insurance will also be looking for inflation protection. Automatic increases of five percent annually are common on policies, but require a significant premium increase to compensate. If a lead seems unsure about this option, but is still interested in inflation protection, you may wish to offer policies with an alternate method.
The policyholder will periodically be offered the ability to increase the premium and benefit amounts to take inflation into account. This puts the premium and the coverage under the control of the person holding the long term care insurance policy. Remember to discuss the options for how benefits are paid with your leads, too. Reimbursement for exact expenses up to a maximum daily amount is one option, while other policies offer a fixed payment, no matter what expenses are actually incurred.
Most leads are significantly concerned by the amount of their premium. They should know in advance that a fixed, level premium may not be as fixed as they expect. After all, while a level premium is a promise by the insurance company that the individual person’s premium won’t go up, it does not cover cases where the prices are increased for an entire class of policyholders. Leads should be aware that this is a possibility, and should be prepared for it.
Whether or not a plan is tax qualified is another factor that many long term care insurance leads are concerned about. After all, a tax qualified plan has to meet certain rules set down by the federal government. Policies that do qualify, of course, are partially tax deductible. In addition, benefits paid by them aren’t taxed. However, you need to tell your client about the age variable cap on this deduction and the need to itemize it on their returns. Keeping your leads informed is an important part of making sure that they purchase a policy and remain your customers. Know what they want and need out of their policies and provide it for the best results.