Insurance broker in long-term-care deal

FWR Staff

11 August 2005

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 . 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 partners to our attorneys, but will actively pursue ways to get the together to better serve 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 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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