According to LIMRA and industry sources, year over year long-term care sales for the first half of 2013 are down about 20%.

So why are large insurers such as Mutual of Omaha and Transamerica aggressively promoting their new LTC products?  In Mutual of Omaha's case, they've even restored increased advisor compensation, which had been previously reduced to suppress product sales.

Well, a primary reason is that these carriers expect these products to be much more profitable than earlier product series, which suffered in the low interest rate environment and were priced with lapse rates that did not materialize.  Now, long-term interest rates are starting to creep up and newer products have much more conservative assumptions. In addition, product features such as creative inflation options and limiting lifetime maximum payouts lower carrier reserving requirements and risk. 

With careful underwriting, these newest generation products will bring a good return to the companies.  Now they need to turn on the sales and marketing machine to get them into the hands of consumers and help with LTC planning.