Insurance World

Copyright 2006 Clay Cotton

When you consider a life long relationship with a Long Term Care Insurance company, you want to rest in the comfort of knowing that you have settled on a company with the highest possible ratings and reputation. After all, you will need them to be there for you in a pinch when you need to file a claim for the specified benefits.

With a serious relationship like long term care insurance, reliability is really, really important, don’t you agree? So our topic today is how to check out a the long term care insurance company to make sure that they meet the highest standards.

In my opinion, the safest thing to do is to work directly with the long term care insurance Buyer’s Advocate, because you can be assured that only top companies and policies will be considered.

In any case, over ten years as an observer of the long term care insurance marketplace, I’m not aware of even one case of fraudulent behavior by an insurance company.

Still, it makes good sense to check into a long term care insurance company’s market behavior, history, ratings, consumer confidence and their records with state regulatory agencies.

1. Call your State Department of Insurance.

2. Ask for Consumer Assistance.

3. Request data on long term care insurance companies, then for each carrier you are interested in, ask for the company’s “Annual Sales Figures for long term care insurance”. Also get the total number of Complaints for both Facility Coverage and for Home Care Coverage. Then ask for their total “Long term care insurance Complaints Ratio” or “Long term care insurance Complaints per Million”. Compare this for several companies to get a feel for consumer confidence.

4. Have your long term care insurance agent obtain in writing the company’s current A.M. Best Rating. It must be A- or above. Accept no B+ or lower ratings unless you have health conditions which prevent coverage with a higher rated company.

5. If you are really serious, you can visit the Department of Insurance in person, and ask to see the “Rate Logs” to determine how many times, if any, a company has raised rates on any group of long term care insurance poicyholders in your state. A history of multiple rate increases over more than a few years would be a red flag.

6. Go to the Public Library - Ask reference desk for insurance rating books, specifically ones like A.M. Best, Weiss Research, S&P, Moody’s, etc.

Do this before you make your commitment to one company or another. Sure, it’s a little work, but you and your family will depend on this long term care insurance company in the caregiving years, and that Is a time when you want to minimize hassles. You’ll be glad you did.

Wouldn’t you love to know how insurance companies come up with your home insurance rates? Maybe you wouldn’t after you understand what all is involved. The whole concept of insurance started as a benevolent community partnership. Life insurance was the pioneer. When a member of the community passed away the friends and neighbors of that community would drop some money in a hat to help the deceased family give their loved one a proper burial. All insurance is based on the combined giving of local communities. The communities are bigger today and the hat has now become the insurance company. Home insurance rates are calculated by fiduciaries. These folks will add up all of the premiums remitted to the insurance company from a community and will compare it with the number of claims paid from that particular community. These geographical areas are called territories by most insurance companies. When the claims are less and the cost to recover a claim is stable then your rates will be lower. When claims are high and the cost to rebuild and recover is high then your rates will be higher. That is the simplified explanation of how home insurance rates are derived. There are investment factors and many other variables that raise and lower rates also.

Why Shop for Better Home Insurance Rates?

1. Comparing is Easy – It’s not difficult to get a homeowner’s insurance rate. Make sure that you have your declarations page so that you get the apples to apples quote.

2. Comparing is Smart – The worst thing that you can discover is that you have good rates with your present company.

3. Comparing is Leverage – If you like your present insurance company and your agent then a comparison quote from another company will make them work that much harder to keep your business.

There is no better buy in the insurance market than the home insurance policy. Shopping online for rates is one of the easiest methods for comparing rates. Take the time. You will learn a lot the first time shopping online.