The Power List: Who's Who in LTCI 2007

By Brian Anderson

October 31, 2007 at 08:00 PM

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In April, Senior Market Advisor took its first foray into profiling a list of industry leaders when we named 10 to the Annuity Power List. Now we turn the spotlight on the LTCI market, where we have once again identified 10 individuals who are making a real difference in the industry.

The staff at SMA started by soliciting names of difference-makers from a wide variety of respected LTCI professionals, and through research and interviews with industry insiders on and off the list, we culled the candidates down to the final 10 based on who we thought has done the most to further the worthy cause of long term care insurance.

This list has a definite bent on those who offer sales training to agents and advisors. A major obstacle the LTCI industry needs to overcome to reach its rightful place in the portfolio of the average middle class to upper-middle class person is having enough qualified, motivated salespeople who know how to effectively sell the product to consumers.
Several people on this list are at the forefront of LTCI sales training. This will pay off in spades as baby boomers begin to really understand the need for LTCI and the protection it provides to their families as well as themselves. Most have written at least one book about LTCI, from either a consumer or a sales perspective, and just about all of them are frequent speakers on long term care-related topics at industry events.

As is the nature of such a list, surely there are plenty of deserving, well-qualified people who were omitted. But in reading the profiles on the following pages, we think you'll agree the people we did pick are deserving of the honor.
– Brian Anderson, editor

Stephen A. Moses

Stephen Moses is so serious about promoting LTCI that he plans on essentially going on tour for a year to do so.

Moses is widely regarded as one of the most articulate spokespeople for privately financed LTC. He is the president of the Seattle-based Center for Long-Term Care Reform Inc., which promotes universal access to top-quality long term care by encouraging private financing as an alternative to Medicaid dependency for most Americans.

Starting Jan. 1 of 2008, Moses will embark on the "National Long-Term Care Consciousness Tour," where he will live on the road for a year, focusing on six regions of the U.S. for two months each. He will work locally with LTCI producers and providers, financial planners, CPAs, lawyers and government officials to reinforce the importance of LTC planning.

Moses has directed numerous national and state-level studies, and specializes in problems associated with "Medicaid estate planning," the practice of artificially impoverishing affluent people to qualify them for public assistance.

"My contribution to LTC has been to shore up Medicaid as a long term care safety net for the poor by promoting public policy that discourages ?? 1/2 Medicaid planning' abuses and encourages responsible LTC planning," Moses says. "In that regard, I've had an impact on passage of four national statutes: MCCA '88, which made transfer of assets restrictions mandatory and solved spousal impoverishment; OBRA '93, which made asset transfer restrictions longer and stronger and made estate recovery mandatory; BBA '97, which came to be called the ?? 1/2 throw granny's lawyer in jail law;' and DRA '05, which further lengthened and strengthened asset transfer rules and unleashed the LTC Partnership program."

Moses has testified before Congress and two-thirds of the state legislatures in support of policies to discourage Medicaid abuse and encourage private LTC financing alternatives.

Phyllis Shelton

Phyllis Shelton created LTC Consultants with a simple goal: To empower financial service professionals to educate Americans on the need to plan ahead for long term care. "I knew that was the only way for me to deliver the LTCI message to the masses in our country," Shelton says.

Shelton is the president of the Nashville-based training company, which she started in 1991 after several years of very successful personal LTCI production. Since 1991, more than 55,000 financial service professionals have attended one of her live classes or completed one of her online training courses, and she has had training contracts with 10 out of the top 15 LTCI carriers.

"I personally believe that the sale of long term care insurance is 80 percent education and 20 percent product," Shelton says. "Yes, you have to have great LTCI products to offer, but if your prospect doesn't understand the need and the consequences of not having a plan, then you don't make the sale. Education is the answer to success in this industry.

"My gift is to take subject matter that others perceive to be complex and make it so easy a third-grader can understand it. I give insurance professionals a track to run on, and if they stay on that track they will be successful," Shelton says.

Shelton is also a noted speaker and author on the subject, and says she has many industry "firsts" to her credit. Among them are being first to emphasize the following: that less than 15 percent of LTC occurs in a nursing home and LTCI could be the only thing to keep people out of a nursing home; that LTC can be needed at any age; and that Medicaid was the real competition and that producers has better understand it.

"My biggest personal contribution has been to develop comprehensive training that results in an effective, balanced sales presentation. By combining facts and emotion, it results in a closing ratio of better than 50 percent when used with qualified prospects (health and financial), along with a teaching method that allows it to be taught to the masses," Shelton says. "I know how to sell long term care insurance ethically, and even more importantly, I know how to teach others to do the same."

Claude Thau

Claude Thau, FAS, MAAA, is well known as an industry insider and a vocal advocate for improving LTCI messaging to consumers.

He is president of Overland Park, Kan.-based Thau Inc., an LTCI consulting firm dedicated to helping build a sound LTCI industry by providing consulting services, wholesaling LTCI through brokers and training them, and performing pro bono work related to LTCI.

"I have implemented or pushed for more favorable policy provisions, more meaningful marketing with better disclosure where necessary, and sounder pricing through my efforts as the executive in charge of the LTCI business of a major carrier, as a consultant, as a wholesaler and through my industry surveys and presentations," Thau says.

At the first annual LTC summit, Thau took issue with the Government Accountability Office report on LTC Partnerships, and debunked its negative arguments and conclusions one by one.

He serves on the board of the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance, and is also a frequent author and speaker who has conducted many Continuing Education seminars in various states. Thau also actively sells LTCI, unlike most consultants.

Before starting his consulting business in 2000, Thau was senior vice president at Transamerica Occidental Life Insurance Co. and senior officer, LTCI, where he created strategies to develop the business and launched LTCI products with a variety of innovative concepts, resulting in dramatic sales increases.

Among the key issues Thau sees in the market today are assuring the design of coverage that will, when the client goes on claim, satisfy his original expectations. "In addition to claims payment practices, design features such as benefit increases are important in this regard," Thau says.

Few people have as broad a background in the LTCI industry as Thau, making him a natural for this list.

Jesse Slome

In 1998, Jesse Slome founded the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance, which is the leading national member organization exclusively dedicated to building the marketplace for long term care solutions.

Slome, the Westlake Village, Calif.-based organization's executive director, is the motivator, educator and marketing leader for the Association's nearly 3,000 active members. He and the Association's achievements include the establishment of national Long-Term Care Awareness Week (which has resulted in Congressional and numerous statewide resolutions), the organization of seven National LTCI Producers Summits, the largest national conference focused solely on marketing LTCI products, and his authorship of numerous best-selling consumer guides to long term care insurance.

"The first step to achieving universal acceptance of the benefits of long term care planning is achieving acceptance by the mainstream media. The Association and our members will serve as the truthful and intelligent voice for this industry," Slome says. "The growth of sales will be predicated on our ability to find ways to make long term care planning attractive to both younger and more middle-income individuals. Our focus in the years to come will be educating more consumers and producers equally about the benefits of planning and all the options available to them. Education comes first, followed by making available marketing material with messaging that will enable producers to open more doors and close more sales."

Slome has an extensive marketing background, and got into the insurance industry in 1987 after being recruited by one of his clients. In 1991, he relocated from New York to Los Angeles to become the general manager of Aetna's Southern California Pension Operation. Two years later, he became director of marketing for Transamerica's annuity operations, where he volunteered his marketing skills to help the company's fledgling LTC operation take wings. Slome created his own marketing and PR firm in 1995 before being approached about forming AALTCI three years later.

Deb Newman

Debra C. Newman CLU, ChFC, LTCP, is the founder and leader of Newman Long Term Care, a Bloomington, Minn.-based brokerage agency specializing in LTCI.

She is a 28-year veteran of the financial services industry, the immediate past president of the Association of Health Insurance Advisors and currently serves as a director of the LIFE foundation. Newman has spoken at industry events across the country, including national conferences of MDRT, the Society of Financial Services Professionals and the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors.

She is recognized as a thought leader on long term care issues and advises government policy groups and insurance companies on strategies for the future. She may be best known for the tapes and CDs she has produced for consumers and professionals that have been distributed nationwide, helping agents sell LTCI and overcome objections by telling stories.

"I am proud to be one of the first to see and believe in the importance of long term care insurance as part of every person's financial and retirement plan. This gave me the courage to be the founder of one of the first brokerage agencies dedicated entirely to long term care insurance," Newman says. "As a speaker, I have passionately and enthusiastically brought the LTC planning message to the forefront of mainstream agent organizations in over 30 states. And I continue to sit side by side with my colleagues, helping them to communicate this story to their clients."

Newman says she is an optimist who believes people will increasingly recognize that their LTC plan is their responsibility. "The development of new products will make it easier to help clients visualize how long term care planning fits into their investment portfolio," Newman says. "We will also see wider acceptance of LTCI as an employer-sponsored plan. When this happens and the government continues to support positive tax advantages, the tide will rise for all of us."

Harley Gordon

Boston-based attorney Harley Gordon is the president of the Corporation for Long-Term Care Certification Inc., created by Gordon to be the industry's only third-party professional designation, "Certified in Long-Term Care" (CLTC).

Gordon, a founding member of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, has devoted his professional life to helping older Americans and their families protect life savings from the devastating effects of catastrophic illness.

"My background as an elder law attorney – not as an agent in the long-term care insurance industry – has allowed me to bring fresh and, at times, provocative ideas on how to increase the sale of LTCI," Gordon says. "In my profession, I witnessed firsthand the consequences of not having a plan for long term care had – not on the individual who now needed nursing home care, but on his family and their finances."

Believing that LTCI is an effective tool to protect families, Gordon studied how the product was presented. "I was taken back by the high-pressure tactics and focus on risk used to make the sale."

Gordon chose instead to emphasize a strategy similar to life insurance. "The life insurance industry clearly understands that the risk of dying doesn't motivate people to purchase insurance – consequences do," Gordon says. "I believe long term care insurance needs to be sold the same way.

"Once the client understands that there are severe consequences to those he loves, risk becomes irrelevant. The purchase now becomes far more likely because the individual is insuring against consequences, not risk. This philosophy is consistent with how life insurance professionals sell insurance and therefore makes it easier for them to address the subject with their clients."

Gordon has also influenced the industry by helping redefine what LTCI does. "The traditional thinking is that the product protects the individual by giving him choice of where and how he receives care. I believe long term care insurance serves a very different purpose. The product has nothing to do with the individual: one way or the other he will be taken care of. LTCI protects the emotional and physical wellbeing of his caregivers.

Margie Barrie

Margie Barrie is bullish on the future of the LTCI, and says it's a matter of time before it assumes "its rightful place as a mainstream product.

"If a person buys a car, you don't need to convince them that they need car insurance," Barrie says. "Same for LTCI – if a person has a certain amount of assets and a decent lifestyle to protect, the decision to purchase this product should be an automatic ?? 1/2 yes.'"

Barrie is a principal in the New Braunfels, Texas-based company, Hagelman-Barrie LTC Sales Training Solutions, a firm specializing in agent education and training. She is also president of an LTC consulting firm and serves as national marketing coordinator for the LTCP designation and for AHIP's new Partnership Training Program.

A nationally recognized expert in training agents to sell LTCI, she has authored one book on boosting LTCI sales and is currently working to co-author another on group LTC. Barrie also writes SMA 's monthly "LTCI Insider" column, which always ranks as a favorite of readers.

Prior to starting the consulting firm, she was with Benefit Services (now part of BISYS), where she was instrumental in propelling the start-up agency to become one of the largest agencies in the country specializing in LTC insurance. She is considered as a pioneer in the field, having joined this industry in 1990 as a LTC agent.

A key to her effectiveness in training and motivating LTC agents is that she knows from experience how difficult it can be to sell this product. As a personal producer, she developed extremely successful sales approaches, enabling her to push her closing ratio to 80 percent with a persistency rate of 98 percent. She has successfully parlayed her effective sales methods to the national level, working with insurance companies on marketing strategies and comprehensive programs for training agents.

Barrie says her biggest personal contribution to the industry has been her focus on providing what agents need and her perception as "the agent's best friend," especially from the brokerage perspective. "This is indicated by the materials that I have produced and the quality projects I have been involved in," Barrie says. "With my background as first an agent specializing in LTCI and then being sales and marketing director of one of the largest LTCI agencies in the country, I understand first-hand the challenges that an agent faces and the challenges and advantages from a brokerage perspective."

Jim Glickman

"Most people actually have very little idea of what I do for a living," says Jim Glickman. "Fortunately, the business finds us rather than us having to go find the business."

Glickman, FSA, CLU, FLMI, is the president and CEO of LifeCare Assurance Company, a reinsurer dedicated exclusively to the LTCI marketplace. It is a premier provider of customized turnkey administrative and reinsurance services to major life insurers seeking to enter the individual LTCI market in a timely and cost-effective manner. Glickman, a third-generation insurance professional with more than 25 years of specializing in LTCI, is credited with helping create and administrate some very innovative LTCI products. He is also an author and frequent speaker on LTCI topics, in addition to being a member of the American Academy of Actuaries State and Federal LTCI and RBC Task Forces.

But the real reason he is on this list is his part in the creation and development of the Annual Intercompany LTCI Conference, set to hold its eighth event this coming March in Jacksonville, Fla.

Glickman, who is a member of the Board of Governors of the Society of Actuaries, went to the 1999 SOA annual meeting, and noted that out of about 150 sessions, not a single one addressed LTCI. He asked what needed to be done to create an LTCI Section of the SOA. He served as Chairman for each of the SOA's first four Intercompany LTCI conferences, and within three years, the event had become the dominant LTCI conference – thanks in large part to hundreds of unpaid hours Glickman spent working on the event.

The 2007 Intercompany LTCI Conference hosted 850 people, and the event is growing each year. "The industry really got behind this whole thing," Glickman says, noting that cooperation among companies had not been a hallmark of the LTCI market before. "The biggest reason why we started this conference is that the industry was very proprietary in nature. This conference has helped to overcome that. We've worked together toward the common goals of the industry. The education is actually useful to experts, who are learning from other experts."

Gail Holubinka

Gail Holubinka says LTCI is at a crossroads. "We have finally achieved a modicum of public awareness," explains Holubinka, VP of legislative affairs for MedAmerica Insurance Co. of New York. "The problem is they don't believe in it. And ?? 1/2 they' includes legislators as well as advocates and even some insurance folks. Moving this disparate group is a huge job, but the results will shape both our immediate and long term future."
Holubinka was the original developer and director of the New York Partnership for Long Term Care. Many LTCI advocates, including some of the people on this list, have applauded Holubinka's efforts in the design of the New York State LTC Compact, saying that, while controversial, it is one of the most interesting and innovative developments in LTC, just perhaps ahead of its time.

Holubinka's knowledge of long term care financing is the result of over 25 years of experience that includes both the public and private sectors. She has had the unique experience of creating viable long term care funding systems for Medicaid, private insurers, and in between, the NYS Partnership. "That pattern is – as far as I know – unique," Holubinka says. "It is also the basis for what I believe is my contribution – perspective."

Holubinka says that unlike most insurance products, LTCI is inexorably intertwined with its public counterpart. Health insurance is discussed without mentioning Medicaid, but not LTCI. "The acceptance of the partnerships is proof. We have gone from blaming Medicaid for slow sales to working with them to increase sales," she says.

"There's validity to both realities but it's hard to sort out without understanding. And we can't understand because the two camps speak totally different languages with totally different paradigms. Having lived amongst both tribes for many years, I translate. It's needed," Holubinka says.

"Truth be told, the public and private sectors are not going to be separate for a long time – if ever – when it comes to LTCI. Without translation, opportunities will be missed and possibly, misunderstandings lead to disaster for one or both parties.

"I believe LTCI and public LTC financing must work together. The crisis in LTC funding is dire and neither party can handle it on their own," she continues. "You have to see it as it is – the greatest societal challenge of at least the first half of the 21st century. For sheer magnitude, compared to the probability and life impact of aging, the tragedy of AIDS pales."

Hunter McKay

When SMA talked to respected LTCI experts to solicit candidates for The LTCI Power List, one name seemed to appear on just about everyone's list. That made it hard to overlook the contributions of Hunter McKay, known through the industry as the real mover behind "Own Your Future," the joint federal/state long term care awareness campaign.

McKay, project officer at the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, part of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, has had his hands full with the campaign, the first large-scale effort of its kind to attempt to increase public awareness of the need to plan for future long term care needs.

"The ?? 1/2 Own Your Future' long term care awareness campaign is designed to make Americans understand that the best way to retain choice and control over the long term care services they may need is to plan ahead," McKay says. "The project is currently directed by the Office of the ASPE with invaluable assistance from a management team consisting of staff from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Administration on Aging, and the National Governors Association. These federal agencies work closely with state Governors' offices to offer general information about planning for long tem care and state-specific resources with which to begin the planning process."

"Own Your Future" started in 2005, when campaigns were successfully run in five states: Arkansas, Idaho, Nevada, New Jersey and Virginia. More than 15 states have now run campaigns, and letters from the governors of states selected for 2007 are expected to reach approximately 5.8 million households. Consumer response to the campaign to date has exceeded expectations, both in terms of consumer interest and in the number of residents who have initiated long term care planning actions.

"The largest obstacle to getting the program rolling was overcoming the status quo related to information about who pays for long term care. Neither the federal nor the state governments provided clear information for consumers about what they can expect from Medicare and Medicaid when it comes to long term care," McKay says. "If we expect Americans, especially baby boomers, to plan ahead for long tem care, we need to provide clear information about what decisions they may face and to offer resources to assist them in making choices."

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