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Edition

From the Editor

By Nate Worrell

Long-Term Care News, June 2021

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Futurist Anders Sorman-Nilsson kicked off the annual Intercompany Long-Term Care Insurance (ILTCI) conference in April, and he said two things that really struck a chord with me.

  1. “We are all tech companies with a license in our industry.”
  2. “Which technologies will allow us to be more human?”

The long-term care (LTC) industry could be the quintessential embodiment of this juxtaposition. Technological solutions will continue to have an increasing role in all aspects of the LTC cycle, whether in AI-driven underwriting, claims management or virtual assistants to help caregivers track medications. Meanwhile, we have very human sentiments as an undercurrent to the whole process. There are motivations to keep people with their families, to honor legacies, to maintain dignity through cognitive and physical impairments and loss of independence.

With an eye toward the confluence of technology and humanity, this includes a recap of recent Society of Actuary (SOA) research on “nuerological deserts,” where predictive analytics tools and software analysis of claims trends illuminate potential opportunities to resolve higher claim costs related to cognitive care. This issue also presents a more technical article on the topic of actuarial equivalence. Although oriented around the calculations that actuaries may consider, the effectiveness of any solution will also depend on a relationship: insurer to client, or insurer to regulator.

Finally, looking ahead to future issues, if you have any insights or passion about private or public solutions, we would love to receive your submission.

—Nate Worrell, on behalf of the LTC Section Newsletter Co-editors

ILTCI RECAP from Steve Schoenveld

The past year has been very tough for in-person industry conferences, but for many it has been a time of great opportunity. Our own homes have been turned into session presentation stages, exhibit halls, snack bars and roundtable discussions. While technical glitches still abound, there have been many more opportunities to obtain continuing education and participate in industry events than ever before. The ILTCI Conference has always been an in-person, three-day event but pivoted to an all-virtual approach over three weeks in April. Attendance was very robust; the conference was a huge success!

The conference was reformatted using the afternoons of Tuesdays and Thursdays during the three weeks to produce more than 45 sessions across a wide array of topics. As we “Zoomed” from session to session, the ease with which we could participate was extraordinary. I personally listened to a session while getting vaccinated! For ease of administration, each session was limited to an hour, and while the interactions between the audience and speakers was a chat feature, many sessions included polls and roundtable breakouts.

To date, about 2,000 participants have registered for the conference, and in total there have been 12,261 individual session registrations. Attendees came from many disciplines with a wide array of titles and involvement in the LTC industry. Our estimates indicate that at least 50 percent have never attended the ILTCI conference in the past!

The sessions covered a range of new topics within the main tracks of Claims & Underwriting; Legal, Compliance & Regulatory; Management & Operations; Advisors & Agents; Marketing & Distribution and, of course, Actuarial & Finance. New this year is the Aging in Place Solutions track where speakers featured innovative approaches to assist individuals and families with an aging loved one. This was especially popular as the pandemic has heightened the awareness of the desire and need for the impaired to remain at home.

We offer a great thank-you to all of the conference sponsors, track sponsors and individual session sponsors who enabled this conference to be provided free to the attendees. Additionally, the speakers, the session coordinators and the planning and executive committees should be thanked for their tireless efforts to allow for such a robust agenda. We express additional gratitude to the Chair of this year’s conference, Barry Fisher, the co-Chair, Vince Bodnar and the past chair, Robert Eaton, for their work this year as well as in 2020 when so much uncertainty seemed to mount.

The ILTCI website (www.iltciconf.org) continues to host free recordings of all sessions until July 1, 2021. A visitor only needs to register to access the sessions. Next year the ILTCI conference will take place March 20–23 at the Raleigh/Durham Conference Center in the great city of Raleigh, North Carolina. Please look for registration opportunities in the coming months, and consider volunteering your time to present, produce or join a committee as we seek to continue to Inspire, Lead, Trust, Collaborate and Innovate.

Section News

Podcasts

  • April—"Impact of COVID on LTC” Char Hu, founder of Georgetown Living dementia communities and CEO of insurtech company The Helper Bees, sits down with us to discuss the implications of the coronavirus pandemic on long-term care, including staffing, safety protocols, digital transformation and the future of both facility and home-based care.

Webcasts

  • Past webcasts are available for section members through SOA Engage.

The Buzz

This is a list of articles compiled from around the web that may be of interest to section members. Links to the articles do not imply endorsement from the SOA and/or the LTCI Section. Please submit considerations for weblinks to sections@soa.org.

Cross Section: Articles of Note from Other SOA Section Newsletters

From the Web

News Feeds/Compilers

  • McKnights
  • LTCI Summit
  • Howard Gleckman’s Blog—Howard is senior fellow at the Urban Institute, affiliated with the Tax Policy Center and the Retirement Policy Program. He is the author of Caring for Our Parents: Inspiring Stories of Families Seeking New Solutions to America’s Most Urgent Health Care Crisis, as well as two blogs—“TaxVox” and “Caring for Our Parents.”

Articles/Stories/Studies

Websites to Watch

  • Milken Institute Long Term Care “Landscape” report.
  • Global COVID updates at LTCovid.org—The LTC COVID website is managed and funded by the International Long-term Care Policy Network (ILPN) and Care Policy and Evaluation Centre (CPEC) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). They have an active Twitter account (@LTCCovid) that posts global developments.
  • The Home Care Association of America has a host of COVID-19 resources for members.

Consultant Corner

 

Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the editors, or the respective authors’ employers.

Nate Worrell, FSA, is a client support actuary with Moodys’ Analytics. He can be contacted at nathan.worrell@moodys.com.

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