(Image: Allison Bell/ALM)
State insurance regulators today are peering inside the actuarial belly of a mysterious class of products: life insurance policies that offer long-term care (LTC) benefits.
One discovery is that some life insurers may not be eager to talk about the inner workings of their life-LTC hybrid secrets.
Another is that the typical issuers that will talk use separate processes to set the reserves for the hybrid life benefits and the LTC benefits.
(Related: Life-LTC Hybrid Sales Level Off: LIMRA)
Warren Jones has included those findings in a slidedeck prepared for the Long-Term Care Actuarial Working Group, an arm of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC).
The NAIC is holding a national in-person meeting in New York City this weekend. The working group has been seeking a better understanding of life-LTC hybrids. It included a copy of Jones' slidedeck in a materials packet for session that was scheduled to take place today.
The NAIC and Life-LTC Hybrids
The NAIC is a group for state insurance regulators.
The Long-Term Care Actuarial Working Group is part of the Health Actuarial Task Force at the NAIC, which, in turn, is part of the NAIC's Health Insurance and Managed Care Committee.
Insurance agents often think of stand-alone long-term care insurance as a product sold by life insurance agents, but regulators have traditionally classified as the health insurance product.
Perry Kupferman, an actuary with the California Department of Insurance, runs the Long-Term Care Actuarial Working Group.
The Hybrid Issuer Survey
Life-LTC hybrids, or combination products, have become a popular alternative to stand-alone LTCI policies in recent years.
That's partly because many consumers prefer to buy a product that will provide some value if they don't need long-term care serves.
Many life insurance company product designers also believe that a life-LTC hybrid is easier to write than stand-alone LTCI, because the main source of uncertain is when the insured will use the policy benefits, not whether the insured will use the policy benefits.
All of the hybrid products have been approved by state insurance regulators, but regulators have had a hard time getting a broad view of how the math inside the hybrid products really works.
