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New Nursing Home Care Accelerated Benefit
Provides Long Term Care Alternative
Symetra Life’s two no-cost living benefits can provide a long-term care
safety net, with all the advantages of universal life insurance. |
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By Steve Daiber, Regional Vice President |
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You’ve probably seen the statistics and so have your clients: The average cost of a private room in a nursing home is now $70,080 per year.1 What consumers don’t hear very often is that the chance they’ll actually need long-term nursing home care is fairly slim (see the box). |
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That’s not to say long term care (LTC) insurance doesn’t have a place. But what if you could show your clients how to get the same peace of mind from a universal life policy (UL)?
Consider this: If your client doesn’t require professional long-term care, the premiums paid toward LTC insurance disappear. But with UL, your clients or their heirs will have a 100 percent opportunity to use their money.
If they don’t use the cash value to pay for medical expenses, then the policy cash values may still be there to help pay for a child’s education, supplement retirement income, or provide a tax-free death benefit to heirs.
No-Cost Living Benefits
Symetra Accelerated Universal Life policies have no-cost living benefit riders that allow your clients to access up to 100 percent of a discounted death benefit in advance, if they are confined to a nursing facility for at least 180 days or if they’re diagnosed with a terminal illness.2
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Who Will Need Nursing Home Care? |
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Almost no one under the age of 75. Less than 2 percent of people under the age of 75 receive nursing home care.4 And, by the way, the average life expectancy in the United States is 77.6 years.5 |
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Those nearing the end of life. The average age of admission to a nursing home is 83.4 |
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Most seniors will spend little or no time in a facility. Of those who reach age 65, about 43 percent will enter a nursing home at some point. However, two out of three seniors will never spend time in a nursing home at all or will spend less than three months in one.6 |
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Most elderly are cared for at home. The vast majority of elderly Americans who require long-term care (70 percent) stay in their own homes and are cared for solely by loved ones.7 |
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Unlike long term care insurance, your client controls how the money from their universal life nursing home care or terminal illness accelerated benefits are spent. They can use the living benefit to pay for nursing home care, in-home care, medical bills or any variety of expenses.
Another advantage is that in many cases, LTC and UL products can be comparable in price for your clients and in commissions paid to you. In 2004, an individual LTC policy (with no cap on the benefit period) for someone age 55 would cost about $3,500 a year.1
On the other hand, in today’s dollars the annual premium for $200,000 of Symetra Accelerated Universal Life coverage would be $3,900 per year for a 55-year-old, nonsmoking male.3
Imagine: If, as we noted above, the average age of admission to a nursing home is 83, a client who purchases their LTC policy at 65 could potentially pay premiums for an additional 18 years before accessing the benefit, assuming they use it at all! Your client could easily pay well over $100,000 in premiums for a benefit two out of three seniors who reach age 65 will never use (see box).
Term Life Fully Convertible to UL
Another key advantage of placing your business with Symetra Life is that our term life policies are fully convertible to any Symetra permanent plan, including VUL. That’s up to age 75, and with no additional medical exams or underwriting.
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Unlike most LTC policies, there are no annual limits on how much your client can receive. That means a 65-year-old with a $1 million term life policy could have a stroke and then convert his policy to a permanent plan. After 180 days in a nursing home, your client could access up to 100 percent of his death benefit while he’s still living.
With Symetra Express you can get a quote for term life or universal life in seconds. In fact, you can complete the entire sale — get a quote, apply for and deliver a certificate of temporary insurance — in as little as 10 minutes.
For more information, contact the Sales Center at invest@symetra.com or 1-800-706-0700. |
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1 Jane Adler, "Premiums Rising on New Long-Term-Care Policies," Chicago Tribune, Oct. 10, 2004.
2 See policy for a full description of benefits and riders.
3 Based on a Symetra Express quote for Accelerated Universal Life, Sept. 2, 2005.
4 Consumer Reports, "Sales Pitches and Their Catches," November 2004.
5 National Center of Health Statistics, "Life Expectancy," accessed online Sept. 2, 2005.
6 The Retire Early Home Page, "Lifetime Use of Nursing Home Care," New England Journal of Medicine, Feb. 28, 1991.
7 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Long Term Care," Medicare page, last updated March 31, 2005.
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