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Some state insurance regulators are uneasy about how they and their colleagues are regulating life insurance policies and annuity contracts that include long-term care benefits.
Concerns about the regulatory environment for LTC hybrid products surfaced last month at a Senior Issues Task Force session at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' spring national meeting in San Diego
Consumer advocates and some regulators at the session talked about having only limited knowledge about how regulators outside their home states have been handling oversight of LTC hybrid products, according to draft meeting notes posted on the task force section of the NAIC's website.
An NAIC staff member is compiling a guide summarizing how each state handles LTC hybrids.
Ned Gaines, a Nevada regulator and the task force chair, suggested that states may need to work toward taking a more consistent approach to matters such as LTC hybrid pricing and consumer protections.
What it means: State regulators could start to develop new rules for products that some older clients may be using to try to protect themselves against the risk of facing big bills for nursing home care, assisted living facility stays, home care or other forms of long-term care.
State differences: Meeting participants suggested that some states may let insurers increase premiums for LTC riders attached to life insurance policies and that other states may not allow premium increases for life-LTC hybrids.
Some states may exempt LTC benefits riders from the reviews they would impose on stand-alone long-term care insurance policies, participants said.
Participants talked about starting a project to collect states' LTC hybrid product filings and have regulators see how each state is handling them.
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