Genworth Financial is easing its way back toward selling new long-term care planning products, by using its CareScout care coordination unit to create a preferred long-term care provider network.
The new CareScout program will offer employer-sponsored benefit plans, other long-term care insurance providers and Genworth's own LTCI policyholders access to care providers who have signed a provider network agreement.
CareScout has started by setting up a home care provider network in Texas, Tom McInerney, Genworth's CEO, told securities analysts Thursday during a conference call.
Genworth still provides LTCI coverage for 1.1 million people, and dozens of home care providers in Texas seem to be interested in joining the CareScout network, offering discounts of about 10% to 20%, and getting a chance to serve those LTCI insureds, McInerney said.
"Our projections indicate future cost savings in the $1 billion to $1.5 billion range on a net present value basis, depending on how quickly the preferred network is available nationwide, how many Genworth long-term care policyholders choose a provider within the network and the level of discounts we are able to achieve," McInerney added.
What It Means
If the CareScout network succeeds, it could help attract attention and financing to other long-term care access programs, such as The Helper Bees long-term care concierge program, and make life easier for clients who are trying to find affordable, vetted homemaker services providers, home health care providers and care facilities.
Genworth
Genworth is a Richmond, Virginia-based company that helped create the modern U.S. long-term care insurance industry, and then ran into problems when it found that most of its assumptions about the investment markets and how the insured people would behave were wrong.
The company stopped marketing new individual long-term care insurance in 2019, and it no longer reports making new group LTCI sales.
