United of Omaha, a Mutual of Omaha company, has introduced a new solution to help meet customers’ long term care (LTC) planning needs. The company recently launched a long term care rider on its Income Advantage and Life Protection Advantage indexed universal life policies.
Since 1987, traditional long term care insurance has been–and continues to be–a core product for Mutual of Omaha. The new rider provides another option for customers who wish to help cover the significant risk of incurring long term care expenses.
By adding the LTC rider to a new indexed universal life insurance policy, customers are able to help protect a couple of important needs through a single policy. The life insurance helps protect loved ones with a death benefit, while the rider allows policyowners to use all or a portion of the death benefit early for qualified long-term care expenses, based on the coverage amount chosen.
Mutual of Omaha’s new rider provides benefits for a wide variety of long term care options, including nursing homes, assisted living, home health care and adult daycare. Customers have the flexibility to choose their LTC coverage amount and select a monthly payout of one, two or four percent of the maximum benefit.
Mutual has offered an accelerated death benefit for chronic illness rider on its universal life policies for more than a decade. There is no upfront cost on that rider–the customer is only charged if he or she ends up needing it.
With the introduction of the LTC rider, customers now have a choice. The first option is to purchase the LTC rider at the same time as their IUL policy. If the customer does not purchase the LTC rider–or does not qualify for it–he or she will automatically receive the chronic illness rider at no charge.
“This choice of a chronic illness rider or an LTC rider is unique within the life insurance industry,” said Joe Kenny, Mutual of Omaha vice president and actuary. “We have many customers and advisors who value our chronic illness rider due to its simple design and lack of upfront cost, but there are some who prefer the known monthly benefit of the LTC rider. We are now able to let our customers decide how they want to cover this risk.”
Founded in 1909, Mutual of Omaha is a full-service, multi-line organization providing insurance, banking and financial products for individuals, businesses and groups throughout the United States. For more information about Mutual of Omaha, visit www.mutualofomaha.com.
