Offering a life insurance policy that provides long-term care benefits may increase sales of stand-alone long-term care insurance.
Ken Latus, a Northwestern Mutual executive, gave that assessment Tuesday in an interview.
Latus is the policyholder-owned insurer's vice president of risk products and is CEO of its LTC subsidiary, Northwestern Long-Term Care Insurance Co. As such, he has an unusual perspective on the long-term care planning market: He's at a company that's still actively selling stand-alone LTCI policies, still handles its own LTCI claims and has increased the premiums of the older policies only about 30% since it issued them.
He declined to give detailed numbers, but he said that a whole life-LTC hybrid the company introduced in 2022 has been selling well and that sales of stand-alone policies have also increased.
The company's advisors seem to be more likely to focus on long-term care planning now that they have both stand-alone policies and hybrid products in their toolbox, Latus said.
About 74% of the people who buy Northwestern Mutual's long-term care planning products already own other Northwestern Mutual products.
The clients who are most likely to want stand-alone LTCI coverage and be healthy enough to qualify for it tend to be members of Generation X, or people born from 1965 through about 1980. In 2025, the oldest members of Generation X will turn 60.
By now, members of Generation X "have seen the impact of care needs on their parents and grandparents," Latus said.
