Huh?????? I do not follow your line of thought?
MassMutual Brokers
- Thread starter Charlie456
- Start date
Huh?????? I do not follow your line of thought?
Tyler answered my question thoroughly, those bent on figuring out my "logic" sorry about that...didnt mean to ask a question on the forum..
Justin,
I suppose if you know a policy is purposefully marketed at a ridiculously low teaser rate your thinking makes perfect sense. In this instance, however, Mass Mutual's policy is reasonably priced- comparable to current pricing with LifeSecure, Genworth, and Mutual of Omaha. It is not a lowball premium. And Mass Mutual is a fairly selective underwriter. The reason to jump in while you still can with Mass Mutual is that for many consumers they will sleep better at night knowing Mass Mutual's book of business has historically been solid with zero rate increases. And should Mass Mutual ever need rate increases in the future I would think it will initially request the increases first on the policies sold 2000-2007. It will be years I think before a 2013 policy series will be impacted.
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Rumor confirmed as true.
it boils down to one simple fact: LifeCare (Mass Mutual's TPA for LTCi) has struck a deal offering a better product with another company. I suspect that MM is not too happy about that.
I'm missing the connection. Why does that cut out brokers from selling their product or why would they only allow career agents to sell their product?
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So which company and product is that?
And does that mean that the new product will not be competitive at all and independent agents will have no interest in selling it so Mass decided to not put any resources into that channel anymore?
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I miss the "thumbs down" button
I will state that I do not know why Mass Mutual is pivoting towards restrictive channels of distribution for its LTC product but I will guess the recent acquisition of 4000 retail Met Life agents is a factor. I do not think Lifecare's development of the National Guardian LTCi product is factoring in to Mass Mutual's decision to restrict distribution. The fact is that by increasing agent size from 5600 career agents to 10,000 by adding the 4000 Met Life career retail agents Mass Mutual now does not "need" additional brokers.
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Arthur Rudnick
Guru
- 1,652
Here's a response from a VP, Head of Brokerage with MM:
"No truth to that at all. That rumor has been around awhile now. Sales in the brokerage channel are up over previous years, to be sure, and as you saw we cracked the top 10 by premium according to LIMRA, but nothing has been communicated to us validating that rumor."
"No truth to that at all. That rumor has been around awhile now. Sales in the brokerage channel are up over previous years, to be sure, and as you saw we cracked the top 10 by premium according to LIMRA, but nothing has been communicated to us validating that rumor."
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Charlie456
Expert
- 88
The logic in that arguement doesn't make sense... Many LTC carriers have attempted to slow sales down when they are getting more of the business than they are comfortable with. A big carrier in the past has even paid incentive bonuses to BGA's that SLOW sales down/submit less and another shaved brokers commissions by 20%+ for a period of time to discourage sales.
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Didn't MM take the LTCI back in house a few years ago? I know LifeCare originally designed the product but I didn't think that was true with what they offer today...
With regard to the new LifeCare product being better, we won't know if that's true until we get all of the details and the rates. I know it offers some great features like lifetime and 10 pay but they are saying that their UW will be the toughest in the industry, we don't know the rates and commissions will be paid differently resulting in smaller trails.
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