What is an Ideal Long Term Care Benefit Amount?

Long Term Care insurance continues to be one of the more challenging solutions to sell clients but most of the challenges are self-inflicted wounds by the agent themselves.

Now there are many factors that can play into this:

• Fear
• Uncomfortable with the value proposition
• Misunderstanding of how the benefit works to help clients most efficiently

This results in not enough agents talking about Long Term Care insurance and closing rates being low as their mindset and approach become the obstacle.  None of which helps the client.

Today I’m going to focus on a question of “What is an ideal long term care benefit amount?”  This is one of the obstacles and it stems from thinking about LTC as an asset protection solution.  Sure it can as a result but this is not the correct way of thinking about it.  Long Term Care insurance protects the family from a catastrophic event both emotionally and drains the families cash flow. 

The cost of LTC can be steep for full blown facility care however designing a plan to cover the full cost of that care ignores the person’s or couples cash flow.  Covering the full cost of nursing facility care is over insuring the need and leads to higher premiums and more clients passing on protection.  A single person needing care in a facility can dedicate almost their entire income towards care.  Covering the income gap between long term care costs and their retirement income essentially protects the assets at 100%.  The couple’s situation is very similar with the difference being determining what income you want to protect for the healthy spouse.

Dueling Mindsets

Asset  vs. Income

Which one are you?

Changing your approach and mindset to an Income Protection strategy you will see your closing ratio climb and more of your clients are helped.  Now this is not the only secret to increasing your performance with LTC sales, though it is a very important step.  Presenting this properly is also important.

I challenge you to take an income protection approach with your next LTC case and you will be pleasantly surprised.

Contact Insurance Advisors today for more information about choosing the ideal long term care benefit option.