Some have taken our multi-life (group) long-term care insurance message to heart and we greatly appreciate all of the proposal requests you?ve sent us since our meetings in September. Many others, however, are either waiting for a special invitation or are so worried that they don?t know everything there is to know about LTCi that they won?t take the first step. It is Long-Term Care Insurance Awareness Week; what have you done to alert your prospects and clients to the need for long-term care planning and the value of long-term care insurance?
The best way to learn the wonders of multi-life long-term care insurance is to see how it works in a real situation. A good place to start is your own agency. We also know that you are re-quoting your group cases as they near renewal on a monthly basis and you are working to bring new clients into the fold all the time. Here?s that special invitation you may have been waiting for; how about sending us a census so we can show you how easy, inexpensive and valuable long-term care insurance can be when presented in the employer group setting.Believe me, you may be the first group health insurance agent to show your prospects and clients the value of multi-life long-term care insurance. This is a good thing!
In most cases, an employer isn?t going to think about long-term care insurance unless you bring it to his/her attention. Getting them tuned into providing any kind of new benefit starts with introducing a fresh idea. As you know we have brief and straightforward presentations that you can use to quickly and easily illustrate the value of LTCi to the employer and his employees. We also have very simple group illustration software, from two key long-term care insurance carriers, Prudential and MetLife, which demonstrates how affordable an employer sponsored plan can be. Susan, I or your BJFIM/Paradigm Marketer will even do a conference calls or face-to-face meetings with you and your client to answer any of their detailed questions. Don?t be timid; we won?t let you fall (or fail for that matter)!
You almost certainly already have the information that we need to generate a quote:
- Census in Excel format (this is required for any group with more than ten employees).
- Employee name (preferably in two separate fields) and date of birth.
- Employee marital status (even if the spouse doesn?t purchase a plan there is a discounted rate for being married).
- Job classification or salary. This helps if the employer wants to do a carve-out and/or created classes for different levels of benefits.
Unless you and the employer have a specific benefit design in mind, we suggest that you illustrate two or three basic core plans. As I?ve stated in previous posts, depending on the average age of the employees, the typical core benefit cost is about $30 per month. Once the employer sees that they can provide a high impact and valuable benefit for about the same or less than dental insurance coverage you will get their attention. Then you can discuss placing more robust benefits on the employer, key employees and their spouses. And remember, with three employer paid lives underwriting is simplified. Baring some dread disease or disability on the part of an employee, the policy will get issued at standard rates with a 10% employer sponsored discount. My friends, it doesn?t get any better or easier than this!
When you introduce your clients or prospects to an employer sponsored long-term care insurance plan what is the worst they can say to you? No? More likely they?ll want to focus on themselves and their key employees particularly when you tell them that the premiums are tax deductible and the benefits are tax free. Worst case scenario? You have planted a seed for further discussion. Maybe you go back and talk about this after the medical/dental insurance renewal is completed or next year, at renewal time, you bring it up again.
Is there anything else you?d like us to create to assist you in helping your clients provide an incredibly important and high impact employee benefit? Hopefully, you haven?t forgotten the generous first year commissions earned and the stream of vested renewals you can build for yourself? If you have, consider yourself reminded.
We are very sensitive to your time restraints and need to focus on core business, however let me mention this; we?ve discovered that once an agent writes his first multi-life long-term care insurance case it won?t be their last. Put us on your group quoting distribution list. Our normal turnaround time for multi-life LTCi quotes is less than two business days. If you have a case that?s ?on fire? we can fulfill your requests in less time. Then we can walk you through how easy it is to present a group LTCi quote to your clients.