An Annuity Might do the Trick

Anyone who reaches age 65 has a 70 percent chance of needing long-term care eventually and yet, despite the statistics, most people don’t expect that they will need long-term care and haven't made a plan to cover it. No one likes to talk about dying, becoming disabled or living too long, but it's your

Trick or Treat

job to find out how your clients will pay for it if it happens to them. If they don't have a plan yet; an annuity might just be the solution they need.

Fixed Annuities can offer an innovative and tax-advantaged way to help manage the impact of long term care expenses for eligible clients. Re-positioning the savings can generate up to three times the premium for long term care benefits that are intended to be income tax free. Like long term care linked life insurance, if long term care benefits are never needed, then the use of the money is still available and if the annuitant dies, the benefit goes to the beneficiary.

The cost of long term care keeps rising and is the biggest unplanned risk in retirement. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditures Report, retirees spend less in almost every spending category as they move throughout retirement than they did when they began retirement. There are only two exceptions: One is housing, which remains mostly the same throughout retirement and the second, is health care costs (including long term care) which only trends upward throughout retirement.

Make sure your clients have a plan to cover long term care expenses in their retirement. Having a plan provides peace of mind for them and for you. The living benefits options that are available now on many life and annuity products, just make it easier to provide them with a solution.

Find out how to get started with an annuity

There's More to the Story than a Diagnosis

October is Breast Cancer
Awareness Month

Now more than ever before, your clients who have a history of breast cancer are eligible to qualify for favorable life insurance rates because more carriers consider an applicant's full medical history for the best possible rating.

According to the American Cancer Society Breast Cancer Facts & Figures 2013-2014, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the United States and second only to lung cancer as a cause of cancer deaths. Men are generally at low risk for developing breast cancer; however 2,240 men were diagnosed with breast cancer last year, and more than 400 died from the disease.

For breast cancer, underwriting the mortality risk varies with the stage of the cancer. Non-invasive cancer has a better diagnosis than invasive tumors. Tumor size is an independent foretelling factor and each involved lymph node worsens the prognosis. Lifelong follow-up is required by the patient to detect relapses, which can occur decades after the initial diagnosis. Good and consistent medical follow up by your client will provide the full picture and is extremely important to the underwriting process. 

To get started with the underwriting process, use a Breast Cancer Questionnaire from NAILBA for your clients that have been diagnosed with breast cancer.