Recently LifeHealthpro.com and Genworth have shared results about advisor interest in LTC planning and long-term care insurance.  Here is an article based on the research, which is also available at www.talkaboutltc.com :

Advisors selling products with LTC benefits have been doing so for an average of 7.43 years, though half have been selling LTC products for a decade or more. Advisors in higher income brackets have been selling LTC products for a longer period of time, which makes sense given the conventional wisdom that more successful advisors are less transactional and more geared towards planning, as well as serving an affluent clientele that demands more holistic planning.

For advisors active in this market, LTC product sales provide a meaningful revenue stream, accounting for an average of 17 percent of their total income. The share of income coming from LTC tends to be higher for insurance-oriented advisors when compared with their investment-oriented counterparts (20 percent vs. 13 percent, respectively), though both groups on average have been active in the market for roughly the same amount of time. Insurance-oriented advisors earn an average of $30,618 in income from LTC product sales compared with $22,028 for investment-oriented advisors.

Market Barometer

An interesting way to gauge the vitality of the LTC market is to measure advisor sales experience as well as advisors’ optimism about product sales in the coming year. About a quarter of advisors actively selling LTC products report an increase in sales in the past 12 months, with 6 percent reporting a substantial increase. More than half—56 percent—report flat year-over-year sales, and 18 percent report a decline.

Advisors who have sold at least one linked benefit (i.e., “combo”) product and those who have sold chronic illness insurance were more likely to report an increase in sales over the past year.

When asked about sales expectations for the coming year, advisors are quite optimistic, with 42 percent anticipating “somewhat” of an increase and 13 percent expecting a substantial increase. Thirty-nine percent are expecting flat sales, and only 6 percent expect a decline (Figure 1).

Interestingly, the deeper the advisors’ activity level in the LTC market, the more optimistic they tend to be, which suggests advisors do not perceive that they are close to exhausting the market opportunity presented by selling LTC products. Those who have sold linked benefit products in the past year also tend to be a more optimistic group.

Here's some great consumer websites to share with clients.