Life insurance can now fund long term care or critical care expenses. Turn your death benefit into a living benefit. American National now offers an impressive group of accelerated benefit riders at no extra charge.
There are three living benefits:
- Chronic – Payment of an accelerated benefit if the insured cannot perform 2 of 6 activities of daily living or cognitively impaired. This is the criteria for long term care insurance benefits with traditional LTC plans. Use your life insurance to augment your LTC insurance, cash comes in handier than expense reimbursement, or have your life policy serve as your contingent LTC insurance.
- Critical – Payment of an accelerated benefit if the insured experiences a critical illness. American National says 16 different illness, but details and definitions must be referred to on the specific rider
- Terminal – Payment of an accelerated benefit if insured has less than 24 months to live. Most life insurance coverage has this terminal illness rider. It’s 12 months in certain states.
North American also has a first class chronic illness rider for long term care at no charge with most of their universal life products. This rider has an impressive acceleration schedule for how quickly you accelerate out that benefit and maximum benefit allowed. Essentially you can take out 95% over a period of 4 years. Contact me for specific details.
With American National, as far as I can tell, there were very little details available, has this accelerated benefit rider (ABR) is on certain universal life products, but not for their term. I do not have details on what percentage of your benefit you can draw out and how quickly. American National’s rider includes critical care where North American does not, which is certainly an advantage, but how useful it is depends on the criteria for triggering the critical care benefit. Practically, a terminal illness benefit must be hard to trigger. How many doctors would certify you as having 2 years or less to live?
These type of accelerated benefit riders are a very favorable method to reserve funds potential long term care expenses. If you don’t need LTC, your beneficiaries get the full life insurance benefits. The pay out is either way. Cover more than one base with a single life policy.
Company Formal Names
American National Life Insurance Company (ANICO)
North American Company for Life and Health Insurance