Visualize Customer Segmentation with a Tableau Dashboard
Long term care insurance is a specialized kind of heatlh insurance that has taken a bit hit over the past seven years. Just as the baby boomers began retiring, insurers began to pay out on long term care claims from policies sold two decades earlier. The consensus was that claims were larger and longer than anticipated. On top of this, the economy came to a screeching halt in 2009 and the country settled into a low interest environment that nearly crippled even the largest insurers that had set premiums and established reserves based on better than a 1% return on their conservative investments. This perfect storm of events resulted in insurers raising premiums, raising health qualifications, cutting sales commissions, or simply exiting the market like MetLife, Prudential, and Genworth. Even Uncle Sam’s attempt at a national long term care insurance program came to a halt because it would not have been solvent without taxpayer support.
The need for this specialized coverage is growing and the interest in long term care insurance remains strong even while many potential buyers cannot qualify for or afford coverage. To learn more about the demographics of those looking for long term care solutions, this summary analysis will consider lead generation data aggregated from LongTermCareInsurance411.com – an online long term care insurance knowledge center and lead generator. The analysis will consider the data and compare it to generally assumed industry trends in long term care insurance sales.
Lead distribution is segmented geographically across the US primarily by population; larger states like California, Texas, and New York have a larger proportion of interest than smaller states. Although the same may be said of the four US regions, the Tableau dashboard indicates a difference in segmentation by age. The Midwest and Northeast Regions have the greatest interest from ages 50-59, while the South and Western regions greatest interest lies with those ages 60-69.
The greater interest from those ages 50-59 confirms what insurers have noted for years: the market for long term care insurance is becoming younger. Of course, this does not explain the age difference by region, so the data begs more research to understand whether these age segments mirror those of the corresponding regions or whether there are other reasons to account for this discrepancy. Understanding this variance could be key in learning how to market to consumers in these different parts of the country.
Lead distribution by marital status and age is another interesting segment. In the three ten-year age bins from ages 50-80, the proportion of married requests decreases and those of individual requests increases. This increase is most dramatic in the later age segments where the number of single requests is almost three times that of married requests. Furthermore, there are four times as many women as men in all single age segments. This trend highlights what industry observers and government statistics have known for years: women are the greatest recipients of long term care as they often provide care to their husbands (if married) and often outlive their male counterparts as well.
In summary, the lead generation analysis confirms prevailing industry trends: those buying coverage are younger than before and more single women show interest in coverage as they move past retirement age. Never the less, additional analysis is necessary to understand why interest in the Northeast and Midwest regions is younger on average (50-60) than that of the Southern and Western regions (60-70).
Go here to view the National Insurance Lead Segmentation Tableau Workbook.