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Long-Term Care Insurance in Review

Last update on: Jun 09 2020

This article explores the brief history of private long-term care insurance in the U.S. You’ll learn how the number of insurers offering the policies has diminished, and in response fewer consumer are buying the policies.

LTC carriers have traditionally been relatively small subsidiaries of large life insurers, many of them publicly traded. And shareholders are unwilling to take on the open-ended risk of catastrophic claims, especially coupled with low investment returns. The biggest LTC carrier, Genworth, is going private after taking $2 billion in charges to boost reserves against future claims and watching its stock price take a beating. A decade ago, consumers could select policies from 100 carriers; last year, perhaps a dozen companies were actively in the market.

 

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