One
wondered why a public hearing room wasn't full of policyholders.
The Maryland Insurance Administration
attracted just two policyholders today to a public hearing on three long-term
care insurance (LTCI) issuers’ rate increase requests.
The issuers making the requests were John
Hancock Life Insurance Company, Prudential Insurance Company of America and
UNUM Life Insurance Company of America.
The Maryland Insurance Administration streamed
the hearing live on the web, through its Facebook page.
John Hancock is part of Manulife Financial
Corp.; Prudential, part of Prudential Financial Inc.; and UNUM, part of UNUM
Group.
Maryland caps LTCI premium increases at 15%.
Maryland regulators held the hearing as LTCI
issuers were working to persuade state insurance regulators to adopt more
uniform LTCI rate increase request review standards, and as Harry Markopolos, an independent
accounting investigator, was clashing with insurance regulators and others over
how well LTCI reinsurance business at General Electric Company has informed
investors about the adequacy of its LTCI reinsurance reserves.
The company representatives at the hearing
were apologetic about the rate increase requests.
“We truly regret having to take rate increase
actions,” said Marie Roche, an assistant vice president with John Hancock.
John Lemoine, an assistant vice president at Unum,
said Unum has absorbed many LTCI-related losses voluntarily. He said the
company had added $750 million to LTCI reserves in 2018.
“We’re making significant contributions to
support this business,” Lemoine said.
One of the two policyholders who appeared at
the hearing said she has owned her policy since 2002, and that the premiums
have increased 197.64% since she purchased the policy.
“When is it going to end?” the policyholder
said. “There’s a lot I just don’t understand.”
She said that even the wording of the increase
notices is wording. She said she does not know if the company wants to increase
her premium by a total of 83%, including some past rate increases, or if it
wants to increase her premium by 83% in the future, on top of the effect all of
the past increases.
The other policyholder who spoke at the
hearing said she had purchased coverage for herself and her husband while she
was working as an analyst for the state of Maryland, through the state’s
voluntary benefits program.
“I’m surprised the room isn’t filled with
policyholders,” the policyholder said.
She noted that Unum executives had said after
the second quarter that Unum is in a strong financial position, and that the
company had said it was going to increase its dividend and buy back shares of
its stock.
“Who are you protecting?” the policyholder
asked the insurance regulators in the room. “Are you protecting their
policyholders, or are you protecting their shareholders? Consider their
customers. Not just their shareholders.”
A link to the Maryland LTCI rate hearing video
is available here.
Links to information about today’s hearing and
earlier hearings are available here.
Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor's insurance editor, previously was
LifeHealthPro's health insurance editor. She has a bachelor's degree in
economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in
journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She
can be reached at abell@alm.com or on Twitter at @Think_Allison.
No comments:
Post a Comment