Agents Optimistic About LTCI Sales: AALTCI

For the agents sticking to the task of trying to protect people against long-term care (LTC) risk, the market outlook looks pretty good, according to the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance (AALTCI).

The news may be full of gloomy headlines about long-term care insurance (LTCI) issuers' efforts to get approvals for rate increases for holders of in-force LTCI policies.

But 48% of agents who participated in an AALTCI survey said they expect their own sales of new, traditional LTCI policies to increase this year, and only 21% predicted their sales of traditional LTCI policies would decrease.

The participating agents expressed even more optimism about sales of products that combine LTC benefits with life insurance policies or annuities.

About 66% of the agents said they expect their sales of LTC hybrid products to increase, and just 7.2% said they expect sales of those products to fall.

AALTCI sent surveys to 1,000 agents and received replies from 333. Only about 10% of the participating agents said they had started selling LTCI or LTC hybrid products within the past five years, and 80% said they had been selling the products for more than 10 years.

About 40% of the survey participants said they sold five or fewer traditional LTCI policies or hybrid products in 2018, but 26% said they sold 26 or more LTC-related products.

Jesse Slome, the owner of Sales Creators Inc., a Westlake Village, California-based insurance marketing support services firm, started AALTCI in 1998.