Family Office
Insurance broker in long-term-care deal
Referrals to help attorneys provide extended-care insurance. LTC
Financial, a long-term-care insurance brokerage firm, has a new
business-referral arrangement with the National Network of Estate
Planning Attorneys (NNEPA) . Under the terms of the deal, NNEPA
will provide members seeking long-term care insurance for their
clients with referrals to LTC Financial's partners.
"We will be happy to not only recommend [LTC Financial Partners']
partners to our attorneys, but [we] will actively pursue ways to
get the [them] together to better serve [their] mutual clients,"
says Daniel Stuenzi, NNEPA's COO.
As Americans live longer into their retirement years,
long-term-care insurance emerging as an important element of
retirement and wealth planning - especially as baby boomers
transition into retirement over the next two decades or so. In
1955 the average retirement age was 68 and the average life
expectancy was 72, according to the U.S. Social Security
Administration. Now the average retirement age is 62 and life
expectancy has jumped to 80. Meanwhile healthier lifestyles and
improvements in medical science are increasing projections for
future life expectancy. It's reckoned that someone born today can
expect to live to 105.
But longer lives can also mean protracted bouts of incapacity due
to accident or illness - things that ordinary health insurance
and Medicare don't cover. "Without [long-term-care] insurance,
all the bills come to you," says LTC Financial president Cameron
Truesdell. "In a couple of years your savings could be gone."
Although most Americans don't grasp the financial risks inherent
in living longer, Truesdell says that estate attorneys understand
it well. "They see the strong connection between health insurance
and wealth assurance," he says.
Truesdell and his partner Craig Smith founded Kirkland,
Wash.-based LTC Financial in 2003. Before that they were
principals of LTC Inc., now part of General Electric's Genworth
Financial. LTC Financial has over 100 Partners around the U.S.,
and represents big carriers including Allianz, MetLife,
Prudential and John Hancock.
Omaha, Neb.-based NNEPA is a business-referral, education and
practice-development resource for estate-planning attorneys.
-FWR
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