Why that new LTCI experience study matters

The study team created a policy utilization database with information from 18 of the issuers, a claim determination database with information from 13 issuers, and a claim incidence database with information from 12 issuers.

The claim incidence databases covers information on 15 million life years of LTCI exposure and 172,000 claims. The claim terminations database holds information on about 200,000 claims, and the claim utilization database holds information on about $7 billion in claims, or about $35,000 in benefits per claim.

In some cases, the project managers use summary variables, rather than variables that capture the full range of possibilities. The managers included a yes-or-no variable indicating whether a policy had ever been subject to a rate increase, for example, but, because of the difficulty of getting data on the amount of increases from all carriers, they did not include any indication of how big the rate increases were.

Do-it-yourself tables

Managers of the SOA's sixth LTCI experience study, which was released in 2011, and covered data from 1984 through 2007, provided many easy-to-use, lay-friendly tables showing, for example, how the insured's age interacts with an LTCI policy elimination period to influence the likelihood that an insured will file a claim.

Managers of the seventh study took a much different approach: They included no lay-friendly summary tables. All of the information is stored in detailed factor effect tables or publicly available "pivot tables" that actuaries, or other sophisticated users, can slice and decide in many different ways.

Users who are comfortable with pivot tables can compare the experience of men and women in Alaska, or of women in Alaska and women in Wyoming. They can sort the claim utilization database based on variables such as age, claim duration, diagnosis and whether the original site of care was a nursing home, an assisted living facility, a home health care provider or something else.

Marianne Purushotham, an actuary at LIMRA who was on the committee that helped create the 1984-2007 study, said the new study includes information from insurers that covered about 75 percent of people with in force LTCI coverage at the end of the 2000-2011 study period.

"This study does stand out from previous studies of its kind in that we had very strong industry representation," Purushotham said.

The study team also took the time to develop mathematical models describing the data, and to show where actual results differ the results predicted by the models.

Presenters at an Intercompany Long-Term Care Insurance Conference in March showed, for example, that although actual claims for LTCI policies with lifetime benefits may be higher than those for policies with limited benefits, the claims incidence for policies with limited benefit periods is actually higher than the incidence for policies with lifetime benefits.

Are we there yet?

So, what exactly could the new study do?

Allen Schmitz, an LTCI actuary at Milliman, said insurers are still looking to see how their companies' experience compares with industry experience, and how well their companies' experience fits with each model that came out along with the data.

"Individual companies will need to determine the appropriateness of that model, including any anomalies, for their specific situations," Schmitz said.

Purushotham said she thinks the information gathered for the new study is comparable to the information gathered for past LTCI studies. "It's unlikely that any material changes in pricing would occur as a result" of the new experience study, she said.

Steve Schoonveld, head of linked benefit product solutions at Lincoln Financial Group, and part of the steering committee that oversaw the latest SOA study project, said the lack of some important variables, such as how a product was sold, and level of underwriting, may limit how much insurers can use the data to design new products and product features.

Other observers suggest that the data in the 2000-2011 study may already be changing the LTC product market.

"There's no real way for us in the field to know if carriers are using that data or not," said Leonard Berthelsen, director-health market product division at Financial Brokerage Inc. Omaha, Neb. "I would assume so. They'd be foolish not to use it."

Berthelsen speculated that John Hancock product designers may have been thinking of the 2000-2011 SOA experience data when they developed their new Performance products, which includes "Flex Credit" mechanism that can give policyholders extra policy value when John Hancock's investments and LTCI products do well.

The Big Shift

One factor increasing the potential importance of the new study may be a shift in market conditions.

When the SOA organized the first five LTCI experience studies, actuarial work was an important function that typical agents and brokers avoided thinking much about.

The LTCI market was a hot new market.

The end of the "cold war" between the United States and the Soviet Union yielded a peace dividend that helped the economy. Interest rates were high, and predictable enough to give insurers a steady flow of investment income.

LTCI issuers could handle typical product design, sales or pricing problems by using a variety of techniques to dress up their earnings.

By the time project managers published the sixth study, they knew something had gone wrong with LTCI product pricing.

When managers were working on the seventh study, they could see that ISIS had eaten the peace dividend, interest rates were low, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 had outlawed earnings window dressing. The harsh light of the U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) made each ripple in a company's performance look like a steep slide straight into Hell.

Today, LTCI issuers have to get the math right to have any hope of turning a profit. That shift could ultimately give the new LTCI experience study a little extra influence.

Managing the future

For LTC planners, having a general understanding of what the actuaries are thinking, and what the actuaries' experience studies show, may be a way to actively managing the future, rather than passively waiting for the future to arrive.

For ideas about concrete ways the 2000-2011 study could affect LTC planners' lives, read on.