Educating Clients On LTCI: Still An Uphill Battle

For instance, she often tells audiences about a couple aged about 62 who took 6 weeks to make a decision about an LTC policy Halverson proposed to them. By then it was too late, because the wife had just been diagnosed with Alzheimers disease.

She also tells success stories of those who were adequately covered at a critical time in their lives. Such anecdotes encourage seminar participants to talk about LTC with their spouses when they go home that evening, she says.

A seminar "cant be all about how to buy a long term care policy," she says. "A lot of agents go on too much about things like plan choices."

Halverson advises producers to team up other advisors such as attorneys, CPAs and agents who sell different financial products. Those individuals already have a trusted relationship with the client, so they can provide credible education about LTC insurance. And then they can refer the client to the LTC specialist for follow up.

Halverson has such a relationship with a local bank. The banks financial advisors ask clients if they have LTC insurance and often refer them to Halverson even if they have a policy, so she can review it.

"Having a third party work with you is an effective way to market because the client has been sold already on the need for the policy when I get in touch with them," Halverson observes.

Working with other advisors is a smart tactic for the LTC specialist, agrees Paul W. Pendorf II, an agent in Laguna Niguel, Calif. "I try to hook up with someone prospects are already doing business with, such as a broker, financial planner or an advisor who is selling them annuities," he says.

The idea is to borrow the authority and prestige of someone on whom the client relies and who does not have a financial stake in LTC insurance, says Pendorf.

Sending prospects information from other objective sources is effective, too, he notes. "It says, Look, someone with credibility says this about long term care."

For instance, Pendorf regularly sends potential clients the National Association of Insurance Commissioners Shoppers Guide to Long Term Care and relevant articles from recognized consumer publications. The mailings are sent to a database of prospects Pendorf has built up from years of cold calling and referrals.

"Once you have them in your database, you have to send something informative every quarter or at regular intervals, such as a newsletter, just to stay in touch," Pendorf says. "Once theyre educated, theyll spend $2,000 to $6,000 a year in premium. Its big bucks. But until then, its a massive education job, even more so with those in their 40s and 50s. You have to try to make them aware of the problem that Medicare doesnt cover long term care. I dont think most people have thought out how much it could cost them."
This article first appeared in the Oct. 18, 2004, issue of LTC e-Wire, an online publication of National Underwriter Life & Health.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, November 4, 2004. Copyright 2004 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.