First, I want to thank everyone for joining today and taking time out of your schedule. For those currently doing business with URL, we appreciate your partnership and the trust you place in us. We know you have many options for where to place your business, and we remain dedicated to supporting your success. For those new to the URL family, welcome. URL is a full-service, family-owned national brokerage that has supported agents for more than 35 years. We specialize in single premium life, fixed and indexed annuities, traditional life products, and individual and group health insurance. Our senior division also offers Medicare Supplement and Medicare Advantage products. After the webinar, I encourage you to visit our website at www.urlinsgroup.com to explore additional ways we can assist you.

Today, I’m excited to introduce Josh Ford with Nationwide. Josh is the Regional CareMatters wholesaler for Nationwide Insurance. For anyone unfamiliar, Nationwide provides life insurance and long-term care hybrid solutions for single and joint insureds, offering guarantees that many other carriers cannot. These solutions help clients leverage their assets into more robust long-term care coverage.

Today’s discussion will focus on planning for long-term care in any market environment. Whether you’ve sold long-term care before or have faced client objections, Josh will share strategies to help overcome those challenges. Please use the chat box for questions as they arise, and we’ll address them throughout the session.

Josh began by thanking everyone for joining and explaining that Nationwide is more than the company seen in commercials. It is a comprehensive retirement and financial services provider ranked as a Fortune 72 company. If its financial arm were separated from its property and casualty division, it would still rank around Fortune 120, larger than brands like McDonald’s and Starbucks. Nationwide is financially strong, and as Jason mentioned, the number one long-term care carrier in the industry.

A common challenge for agents is client hesitation. Many people don’t fully understand long-term care and often find reasons to avoid planning for it. The purpose of this conversation is to help advisors have better discussions, capture more business, and integrate long-term care planning more effectively into their practices.

The conversation began by addressing why clients delay purchasing long-term care. Clients often deny or postpone the need for it regardless of market conditions, but this tendency increases during volatile times. Clients may say it’s something they’ll consider later, that they’ll wait until retirement, or that they want the market to stabilize first. Some are concerned about affordability. While these concerns seem reasonable, it’s important to reframe them with thoughtful questions. Ask what a “better time” really means, when their portfolio will be considered recovered, and how waiting could possibly lead to a better outcome.

Most clients can’t define a better time or specific market condition. In reality, waiting rarely leads to improvement. The earlier clients act, the healthier they are, and the better their pricing and coverage options will be. The greatest risk of waiting is the idea of self-funding. Many clients, especially those with a few million dollars in assets, believe they can “self-insure.” However, no individual can actually self-insure. People are not insurance companies and cannot pool risk the way carriers do. What they are really saying is that they plan to pay out-of-pocket, dollar for dollar, for their care.

Even wealthy clients have built their assets by being cautious with money, and it makes little sense to spend full price for care when they could use an insurance product to create leverage. When discussing this, it’s important to explore whether they will truly have time to save for a long-term care event, what rate of return they can expect over the long term, and how inflation or market downturns might impact their ability to fund that care. Clients should also consider whether they can guarantee there won’t be a market decline when they need to access those funds.

Many people learned this lesson the hard way during COVID. Clients who needed care in that period often had to pull funds from their portfolios while the market was down. Those withdrawals permanently affected their investments, reduced the retirement income available for a surviving spouse, and altered their legacy and charitable giving plans. A long-term care plan can prevent those kinds of financial disruptions and provide stability during unpredictable times.

At this point, Jason noted a question from the chat about whether clients can have multiple long-term care plans. Josh confirmed that it is possible. Some clients have older policies with insufficient benefits and can layer or supplement those with additional coverage. However, it is important to be aware of the HIPAA per diem limits to avoid taxable benefits. Josh added that policy reviews are an excellent opportunity to revisit these topics. Many clients assume they are covered because they bought a policy many years ago, but coverage amounts and pricing have changed significantly over time. Reviewing older policies helps ensure clients still have adequate protection for current costs.

When clients are ready to move forward, there are three main types of long-term care products to consider. The first is traditional long-term care insurance, which tends to be the least expensive option. It functions much like auto insurance, with premiums paid over time and benefits available only if care is needed. Typically, there is no death benefit or cash value. The second is life insurance with a long-term care rider, which allows clients to use their death benefit to pay for care while still living. The third type is the linked-benefit or hybrid policy, currently the most popular approach. These combine life insurance with long-term care coverage, offering both protection and flexibility. Although they include a death benefit, the primary focus of these plans is long-term care protection.

Long-term care is a secondary concern for some clients, but hybrid products offer a powerful way to make it a central part of planning. These hybrid solutions provide a guaranteed structure with both a death benefit and cash value, but their strongest appeal lies in their focus on long-term care. Clients who want a guaranteed plan that can address both life insurance and long-term care needs will find these linked benefit products especially valuable. One of their biggest advantages is flexibility. Unlike traditional long-term care coverage, they allow for multi-pay premium options, making them more approachable for clients who might hesitate to reposition large sums when the market is down. Rather than withdrawing $75,000 or $100,000 at once, a client can fund the same amount gradually over five, ten, or even twenty years. This helps them secure coverage while they’re younger and healthier and gives them a guaranteed premium that can be budgeted over time.

Products like Nationwide’s CareMatters offer this structure, giving clients a way to lock in protection that grows with them. It’s a strategy that helps overcome the common objections related to timing, market volatility, and inflation, while also providing a dedicated stream of funds specifically for long-term care expenses. When a client needs assistance 15 or 20 years from now, the funds come directly from their policy instead of being withdrawn from their investment portfolio. By adding a long-term care plan, clients diversify their assets and create a guaranteed funding source for care—protecting their savings and reducing the financial burden on their families.

When a client purchases long-term care coverage, what they’re really buying is a pool of money designed to grow and be available when needed. For example, a single $100,000 premium could generate about $540,000 of long-term care benefits. That half-million dollars is guaranteed regardless of market performance, giving the client certainty and security whether markets rise or fall. This diversification of risk allows clients to future-proof their retirement plans.

For many clients, paying gradually rather than in a lump sum is the most effective way to move forward. A $100,000 single premium may be daunting, but $10,000 per year feels manageable. Advisors can frame this approach as a form of reverse dollar-cost averaging—just as clients contribute regularly to their investments, they can fund their long-term care protection in small, steady amounts without disrupting their income stream. These contributions can even be set up monthly, which makes the process feel familiar, much like funding a 401(k) or a college savings plan. Over time, those smaller payments can create significant value.

For instance, a 55-year-old client contributing $10,000 annually, or about $833 monthly, could build a benefit worth over $1.1 million by age 85. That same plan would include a death benefit of roughly $142,000, paid tax-free to heirs, which addresses life insurance needs while also providing robust long-term care coverage. The economic advantage of starting early is substantial, and advisors benefit as well. For every client who puts a plan like this in place, that’s potentially over a million dollars of assets shielded from being depleted by care costs—assets that remain under management and continue to support the client’s overall financial strategy.

Nationwide’s policies also provide important built-in safeguards. If a client experiences financial hardship and can’t continue making payments, the reduced paid-up benefit provision ensures the policy doesn’t lapse entirely. For example, if a client completes six out of ten payments, they keep 60 percent of their coverage. This feature requires no additional rider or cost and offers strong consumer protection.

These products also maintain a valuable death benefit component. Because they are life insurance at their core, beneficiaries receive a payout if the insured passes away, even if they’ve used part of their benefits. The rate of return on that death benefit can be impressive—often reaching double-digit percentages in early years—and it’s entirely tax-free.

Waiting to purchase long-term care coverage can be costly. Prices increase with age, inflation erodes purchasing power, and most importantly, health can change at any time. Clients buy long-term care insurance with their health, not their money, and delaying can mean losing eligibility altogether. Nationwide’s average long-term care client is 57, which shows that the ideal window for planning is typically between ages 50 and 65. For someone at 60 or 55 who feels it’s too soon, it’s actually the perfect time.

The key question clients should ask themselves is what’s more disruptive: paying gradually for long-term care coverage or withdrawing large sums from their portfolio during a down market to cover care out-of-pocket. The cost of care can be substantial—around $7,000 to $8,000 per month for assisted living or home healthcare, and up to $14,000 monthly for nursing home care. Investing $10,000 per year in a plan now is far less destabilizing than paying for care directly later.

Health-related declines are another major risk of waiting. Decline rates rise sharply with age—about 25 percent for applicants in their early 60s, 33 percent in their mid-to-late 60s, and nearly 50 percent for those over 70. The longer clients delay, the higher their chance of being declined for coverage. Financially, waiting also costs more. A 55-year-old might pay $9,800 annually for a plan that provides $5,000 per month in coverage, while a 65-year-old would pay $14,000 for a smaller benefit. They’d spend more and receive less.

Buying coverage now locks in lower costs, more time for inflation protection to grow, and the advantage of good health. Waiting offers no benefit and only increases the risk of being priced out or declined. Long-term care planning removes uncertainty about markets, inflation, and health, creating stability in retirement planning.

Nationwide stands out in this space because of its long history, financial strength, and policy design. As a mutual company, Nationwide is not driven by shareholder earnings calls but by the needs of its members. This ensures long-term stability and commitment to policyholders. The company offers a wide range of long-term care solutions beyond linked-benefit products, including riders for universal life and indexed universal life policies, survivorship coverage, and business-owner options with potential tax deductibility.

Another defining feature of Nationwide’s CareMatters product is its indemnity-style payout. Unlike reimbursement models that require receipts or approved providers, Nationwide pays benefits in cash, directly to the policyholder. Once a doctor certifies the need for care, the client receives their benefit—no paperwork, no waiting, no restrictions. If the benefit is $10,000 per month and the client spends only $8,000, they still receive the full amount and can use the extra $2,000 however they wish—on groceries, home help, yard work, or even saving or investing it. This flexibility makes the product uniquely empowering.

Nationwide also provides a residual death benefit. Even if the full long-term care benefit is used, a minimum of 20 percent of the original death benefit remains, paid tax-free to heirs. For example, if a client’s initial death benefit was $180,000, their family would still receive at least $36,000, even after extensive long-term care use. This can act as built-in final expense coverage or a form of premium refund, further enhancing the policy’s value.

Nationwide supports advisors with training, advanced planning resources, and expert consultation at no cost. Whether it’s business-owner planning, buy-sell arrangements, or premium financing, their advanced sales consultants can help structure tailored strategies.

Ultimately, there’s no better time than now to plan for long-term care. Market cycles and health changes are unpredictable, but the certainty of protection today provides peace of mind tomorrow. Clients should act while they’re still healthy and eligible, knowing they’re securing both their future and their family’s financial well-being. Long-term care planning isn’t just about protecting assets—it’s about preserving independence, dignity, and financial stability for the years ahead.