Take the Survey:
https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-expertise/insights/2020/aug/long-term-care-planning-survey.html
Do not miss this opportunity! A National Advisor Survey “What Is The New Normal In Long Term Care Planning?” is being launched on a grand scale this month. This agent/advisor-focused sales analysis is designed specifically to help reveal the mysteries of the structure and motivations of buying behavior from those who make the sales happen.
The survey is sponsored by Oliver Wyman actuarial consulting and Ice Floe Consulting, The project is being advised and supported by NAILBA, NAIFA, numerous traditional and combo carriers and key distribution friends. This is a follow up to an agent focused survey on which I assisted on a consulting basis: The Producer’s Perspective On Long Term Care Insurance conducted in 2004 with support from LIMRA, SOA and Broker World. Results were published here in May, 2004. Hindsight tells us this was at the peak of stand-alone LTCI sales and the answers from those working successfully on the front line of consumer engagement helped identify pathways to increasing sales.
Our ask is clear, straightforward and totally awesome! Take 10 minutes of your busy schedules, answer the survey (even if you do not participate actively in long term care planning). Please contribute your personal strictly confidential insights into “Who is selling What? To Whom? Why? And How?” In return we will forward the complete research results from the largest survey of it’s kind to help you increase your own sales success.
Help Us Help You.
Here is your opportunity to better understand and improve your approach and own your own in-depth actionable intelligence.
Wouldn’t you like to know the unvarnished truth across the entire advisor landscape?
- How advisor demographics have changed?
- The difference between what consumers say are their predispositions to buy and why they subsequently rationalize their purchase?
- What is the weighted motivational hierarchy of the decision to buy?
- What is the clearest path to final product choice?
- How do sales conversations best develop?
- What is the perceived impact of marketplace trends like social media, online applications and COVID 19?
- How does long term care planning best integrate with overall financial planning?
- How has perceived confusion in combo terminology and the abundance of different product options influenced prospective sales?
- What is the best way to increase training related to improved sales results?
- What is the best process to identify the most compatible product choice?
- Which benefit features actually contribute to sales success?
This is frankly a critical perspective and unfortunately one that in my opinion has received inadequate attention. Much work has been done at the consumer level, specifically identifying what could best be described as a blue sky “wish list” for a potential buying decision. As has been suggested frequently in this column this data may be influenced by classic adverse selection. They knew what they wanted because they knew what to expect from their own personal experience. These prospective choices are not wrong but they may be jaded. Then we have asked those who chose to purchase what was the raison d’etre of that decision. The answer has always rebounded that it was because they made a wise financial decision. That is cognitive dissonance on a plate. With your help we can illuminate what actually transpired. We can perhaps reveal buyer motivations as experienced by those who took the applications. The truth was always somewhere in the middle.
Take the Survey! (https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-expertise/insights/2020/aug/long-term-care-planning-survey.html.)
Otherwise none of us will have an informed opinion on the subject.
Nomenclature
Alright, I admit I’m confused—but dear friends I am not alone. The only significant sign of life in life insurance sales are those products that lay claim to some level of contingent long term care planning. We certainly have a plethora (I love the way that word rolls off your tongue) of product options to accomplish a reduction in long term care risk. The problem is we have made a mess of trying to differentiate between the product choices.
The current inventory of named categories may unfortunately represent nothing more than hitting the synonym button on your computer. Let’s begin by reviewing the plain vanilla definitions of the most prevalent choices:
What should strike you is that all the visible market options of life insurance product distinctions with 7702B or 101g ADBRs and/or EOBRs fit all the definitions. Meaning whatever preconceived notions we bring to attempting to understand the various product choices just adds to the cognitive confusion.
Nomenclature then becomes a process, defined as “the devising or choosing of names,” that becomes a “system of names in a particular field.” As usual this potential for mental disarray is substantially compounded by the 80+ companies and myriad distribution marketing sources each trying to distinguish consumer product options based on need and motivation to buy. So now let’s try to glean what we can from the literature.
Are you adequately confused yet? Welcome to the crowd. If we have trouble talking in terms which represent common definitional ground, how many brain cells are we scrambling in our customers? Please explain how we direct traffic in a particular product direction if we are lost before we begin?
Best advice is to follow the money to keep things straight in your head.
There are basically four long term care sales planning choices. And to be perfectly clear yet again, all of them should be on tap when you begin a sales conversation.
And I have not forgotten annuity combos or enhanced payout options. I am also not ignoring short term LTCI health products which are also gaining popularity. They are just alternate cans of worms reserved for another discussion.
Try to keep it as simple as you can. Initial long term care planning conversation will continue to begin with insurability issues and progress rapidly to an evaluation of individual needs coupled with a combination of the willingness to link appropriate action now with the ability to pay for a hybrid solution.
Other than that, I have no opinion on the subject.