Have you ever been on the road and a prospect asks how much LTC Insurance costs? Or if they are insurable? Or how much home care costs per month?
The answer these questions and others, you may not have to pull out a laptop or make a phone call to someone. You could simply need to have your smart phone available and charged.
We've compiled a list of some of the best apps and mobile tools available for LTC planning and LTC Insurance. Note: The tools below are for Apple iPhone - some of them may be available for Android devices as well.
LTC Planning consists of education, planning, and enrolling. There are mobile apps and tools that can help with all three areas. We looked at a cost of care app, a quoting app, mobile underwriting tools, and a future look at mobile eapplications.
The Genworth Cost of care App is available on the Itunes store and is very easy to use. You simply pick a location in the drop down list and it will bring up the cost of care for that area.
Cost of Care Estimator - Genworth
Not surprisingly, the cost for home health care is listed first - according to Genworth, home health care represents 70% of claims they pay! The future cost of care estimator feature is also nice - a simple slider projects costs in the future based on the current inflation environment.
Before determining the ideal carrier for a client, advisors should always get a preliminary health information. Using a toool such as the mobile friendly, easy to complete 
we created can help. This survey results are analyzed by our planning team to make a recommendation.
Likewise, carriers are creating tools as well. Transamerica helps advisors to determine whether some of the most common medical conditions can be underwritten for LTC Insurance by using their TransQuote tool, available on the ITunes Store. Here's a look at a screen shot of the application for depression.
Underwriting Tool - Transamerica
With this app you can also generate rate quotes. The app does require a Transamerica agent number, but if you go the Transquote app page on the iTunes store they have conveniently left a agent number in the screen shot! (It works).
While consumers often underestimate the cost of care, the will just as frequenlty overestimate the cost of LTC Insurance. Having a rate quoter in your pocket makes it easy to demonstrate how much benefit can be bought. Mutual of Omaha has a Quotes App for iPhone that can generate quotes for all of their products including long-term care. It is fast and easy to use.
Premium Quote - Mutual of Omaha
Coming soon - Complete Mobile Quote/Enrollment?
Finally, after taking many years to get from paper applications to PC-based electronic apps, it is likely that the transition to mobile education, plan selection and application submission for LTC will be a much faster. The reason is that the technology required to build a safe, secure eapp process cost major amounts of money just a few years ago while today smaller, nimbler developers can build mobile friendly tools by using "off-the-shelf" products like Docusign. Here's a screen shot of a eapp in testing using docusign that can be be flexible enough to be used with multiple LTC carriers:
Prediction? In less than five years, the only device you'll need to work in the LTC insurance business will be a smart phone. Laptops and tablets will be important for writing and presenting, but business will be able to be conducted through a phone only. What do you think? Any great mobile apps for LTC planning you use? We'd love to hear your thoughts - please comment below.