Broadtower Base

Long Term Care

What Can We Do?

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In dealing with the day-to-day trials and tribulations of the insurance business, agents and advisers spend a great deal of time putting out the “fire” of the day. Over time, our primary job of helping customers identify and mitigate risk can blur as we go from one hotspot to another without asking the most important question, “What can we do for you that will help you sleep better at night?” After all, isn’t peace of mind the greatest service we provide?

In my small corner of the insurance world, we wring our hands about higher premiums, tougher underwriting, and worries about carriers staying the course. No doubt these are topics of interest, but obsessing on real or imagined problems robs us of the bandwidth required to provide some level of financial security in a rather menacing world. While most of our clients don’t have to worry about real lions and tigers eating them for lunch, they do need to be wary of not having the fiscal means to put food on the table or afford the care they need.

As our customer’s guide in the financial wilderness, job one is to help them identify risks and arm them with the weapons to fight the unexpected costs of a lost love one or a chronic medical condition. We can’t always provide 100 percent of everything our client needs or wants, but some protection always beats a blank. Getting better at helping consumers take incremental steps towards financial security is the world we live in today. The reality is that most consumers would be well served if they could at least co-insure many of the financial risks they face.

The good news is we have numerous options to supplement retirement income and savings and to ease the burden when long-term care is needed.

Here are some examples:

  • A traditional LTCi policy with a two-year benefit and a future purchase option;
  • A term or permanent life insurance policy with a chronic illness accelerated death benefit;
  • A critical illness policy that fills the gaps in care provided by today’s health insurance plans;
  • Reposition a rainy-day fund into a life or annuity product that provides long-term care benefits;
    • Great 1035 Exchange opportunities here; and
    • Some annuities provide simplified underwriting for tough cases

Sometimes an incremental strategy of small risk management solutions is the best option for consumers who are struggling with other financial obligations. Don’t overlook these mid-market sales. They can translate into sustained serious income for you and along the way, you may get the “elephant” that you’re hunting for.

Start The LTC Conversation With Innovative Marketing Materials

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Let’s Talk Email Campaign

November has been declared Long Term Care (LTC) Awareness Month by the American Association for Long Term Care — take advantage with the help of Broadtower and its new client marketing campaign. The “Let’s Talk” campaign will grab your client’s attention and get the Long Term Care Insurance (LTCI) conversation rolling.

  • Client Email Campaign
    This turn-key marketing email can be customized specifically to your business and will initiate your successful campaign, generating new leads.
  • Client Brochure
    Use the “What’s Your Plan” client brochure as a tool to start the conversation about incorporating LTC coverage into your clients’ financial plans

Access The Campaign Materials

Initiate an LTCI planning conversation with your clients, raise awareness, and increase your ROI this November with new sales and marketing tools from Broadtower Insurance.

Connect and engage your clients with additional LTCI industry resources:

  • Video
    Educate your clients through an assortment of videos which you can incorporate into your online marketing outreach.
  • Social Media
    Attract your customers with prewritten social-media content to post to your social profile pages.
  • Flyers
    These attention-grabbing flyers can be sent digitally or downloaded and printed out.

Aggregation Of Marginal Gains – The 1% Difference

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Recently, I came upon a concept that can help anyone’s sales performance not to mention their lives in general. It’s a training idea that has become quite prominent in Great Britain ever since Team Sky became an international powerhouse in cycling, winning both the 2012 and 2013 Tour de France. The aggregation of marginal gains is elegant in its simplicity and powerful in delivering results.

Sir David Brailsford (it seems that everyone becomes a “Sir” in Britain once they’ve achieved some degree of fame) became the coach of Team Sky, the national cycling team of England, in 2010. Never a powerhouse in this popular sport, Brailsford believed his team could overcome the trend towards doping and become champions by focusing on the small details of their craft and improving each one by 1%. Small changes in nutrition, health habits, tyres (English spelling) and clothing would aggregate into big gains. Within three years Team Sky achieved Tour de France and Beijing Olympic victories.

I was made aware of the concept of aggregation of marginal gains in a brief presentation on practice management. When I did a web search of the term, I discovered that the theory has become very popular in British business circles as a successful training model. Small positive changes in habits, communications and methods can reap big benefits for any business or sales professional.

The key take-away of this concept is that you don’t have to make big changes to achieve new levels of success. Small incremental upgrades to your thinking, habits and business offering can add up to major increases in your bottom line.

What does this have to do with long-term care insurance marketing? Over the years, I’ve discovered that BGAs and agents who consistently and persistently add long-term care planning to their day-to-day marketing conversations will see improved sales. Here’s an example: a few years ago a broker in Southern California with a multi-line agency, P & C, life and health insurance and investments, added the following question to his daily conversations with clients; “have you taken care of your long-term care planning yet?” This small change catapulted our agent to long-term care insurance sales success. He’s became a consistent top producer of traditional LTCi and now he’s embraced linked products.

Brokerage general agents have more long-term care liquidity options in their product portfolios than ever before. Add the LTC planning conversation to your day-to-day discussions with agents and advisors. This small change will create more sales and add to your bottom-line.

Easy Answers

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We are all of course guilty of succumbing to the temptation of embracing easy answers. However, sometimes it seems our own profession may have a particular affinity for simplification excess.

This is evidenced by a statement I heard recently from the committee examining the wide, and growing world of Combo Products. “Hybrid, Linked and Combo products are the fastest growing segment of both life and long term care insurance.” When you add asset based long term care sales we have a several billion dollar industry with stand- alone LTCI sales accounting for only about $500 million. The interesting question is how much of the current life production is written with some form of chronic illness benefit? The current “guess” is approximately one third. This number will continue to grow as more companies move aggressively to provide some form of living benefit.

These riders are being produced across a very wide spectrum of quality and intent. I am concerned that many may not clearly understand what was sold or in some cases automatically included in their life policy. I am also concerned that consumers may not clearly understand what they bought..

Any leveraging of risk is of course preferable to ignoring the problem. It is also very helpful that we have so many more choices.

Here are a few of the questions that come to mind:

  • How can you sell any version of Long Term Care protection and not be trained or certified to have that conversation?
  • If you offer a benefit do you not have a responsibility to at least offer the lowest net cost to pay for the risk?
  • Did you evaluate 1035 opportunities before recommending any particular new coverage?
  • Did you clearly explain the difference between LTC ‘health’ riders and LTC ‘life’ riders?
  • Where do you place Long Term Care ‘Planning’. Is this a Health or Estate or Asset Management planning process or some mystical combination of all the above?

The ability to conveniently address more than one need for protection with one sale has always been attractive. The current popularity of this approach as it relates to LTCI however requires an understanding that the temptation of easy answers must be resisted. There is no one right answer, each situation is unique. Begin as usual with a careful review of what is already in place. What could be exchanged at what cost? How best do you enhance LTC protection and what is the net cost of those recommended options? We have not found a new, easy answer or an easy way of avoiding a more comprehensive conversation about all the insurance options. The truth is complicated and requires training in all the available solutions. The best answer may actually require a little of this and a little of that. Learn to Mix and Match with confidence and enthusiasm A frank and open analysis of all the good and all the bad of all the choices is best. Companies, agents and consumers need to abandon the quest for that “Easy” red button. Other than that I have no opinion on the subject.