Northwestern Mutual Adds a Long-Term Care Hybrid
Lincoln Financial has also done something unusual about its own life-LTC hybrid.
Northwestern Mutual has introduced the Long-Term Advantage product — a package that combines whole life insurance with a long-term care benefit rider.
The Milwaukee-based, policyholder-owned insurer says the new policy will complement its stand-alone long-term care insurance policy and a life-LTC hybrid that uses a different type of rider to provide LTC benefits.
The product can provide six years of guaranteed coverage for qualified long-term care expenses, and the potential to pay for up to 10 years of total coverage.
If the insured does not need much long-term care, the policy will pay a death benefit to one or more beneficiaries.
A consumer can pay for the new life-LTC hybrid with one payment; a stream of 10 or 15 annual payments; or a mix of one large payment and a stream of smaller installment payments.
In other long-term care planning news:
Lincoln Financial is reducing the price of its MoneyGuard Fixed Advantage and Lincoln MoneyGuard II LTC hybrid products. The pricing improvements range from 0% to 21%, with an average decrease of 8%, the company says.
Certification for Long-Term Care, an LTC planning education program, has joined with Home Instead and Homethrive to poll 400 family caregivers. About 47% said that being a caregiver had spurred them to do more LTC planning for themselves, but 17% said that it had not done that. About half of the caregivers who were failing to plan for their own care cited practical obstacles, such as concerns about the cost or viability of planning options. But 29% said they are not planning for their own care simply because it’s “too hard to think about.”