Genworth Financial is getting closer to restarting sales of stand-alone long-term care insurance.
CaresScout Insurance Co., a new Genworth subsidiary, has completed initial product filings in states that use the Interstate Insurance Compact and in nine other jurisdictions.
"We plan to launch CareScout's first new insurance product later this year," Thomas McInerney, Genworth's chief executive officer, said Wednesday during a conference call with securities analysts.
What it means: The long-term care planning market may be making a real comeback.
The backdrop: Genworth helped create the modern LTCI market, but it set the prices too low and has been trying to recover from that for decades. It ended active efforts to sell LTCI coverage in 2019.
Enact, an affiliate, is still a major provider of mortgage insurance.
CareScout: CareScout is separate from the insurance company subsidiaries that wrote Genworth's old LTCI policies.
Genworth will invest $75 million in capital in CareScout. It's arranging for reinsurance for the LTCI product from a U.S.-based reinsurer with an A+ rating.
Genworth hopes to avoid premium increases by using conservative pricing assumptions and coverage limits, and by encouraging the insureds to use Genworth's new CareScout Quality Network of long-term care providers.
Providers in the network pass quality checks. Most agree to offer network users discounts. CareScout keeps 25% of the savings and passes the rest on to the insureds.
The CareScout network now has contracts with about 500 home care providers. It plans to add assisted living facilities this year.
For now, the company offers the network only to its own policyholders. It made about 450 matches of policyholders with providers in the fourth quarter and about 180 in January.
Genworth will soon open the network to other insurers that still provide LTCI coverage but have stopped selling new LTCI policies.
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