AI helps families plan for long-term care

Planning for long-term care always has been one of the most emotionally complex and financially uncertain parts of preparing for retirement. Many families delay the conversation until they’re in crisis, often leaving limited options and a heavy burden on loved ones.

But artificial intelligence is starting to change that, offering a smarter, more personalized way to think about long-term care planning, and providing independent agents with new tools to help their clients prepare with confidence.

Why long-term care remains a wildcard

Long-term care needs are deeply personal. They depend on a range of hard-to-predict factors: health changes, family support, geography, lifestyle, and many more.

Unfortunately, traditional planning tools have relied on generalized statistics and outdated assumptions. Simulations like Monte Carlo models may show general likelihoods of what scenarios may deplete a family’s investments and savings accounts, but they rarely help families picture what long-term care might actually look like, how to plan around it, and when it may make sense to consider alternatives to self-funding LTC costs that so often single-handedly break retirement plans.

That’s why so many LTC conversations rarely go anywhere actionable. Families get overwhelmed. Advisers struggle to make the topic feel urgent or relevant. Resulting in many families not taking action until it’s too late.

Enter AI: Turning uncertainty into insight

AI technology helps advisers and families cut through the fog of future LTC needs and LTC planning. By analyzing look-alike families from hundreds of millions of data points (ranging from regional care costs and inflation trends, to family caregiving patterns and health history), AI can create hyper-personalized forecasts of a person’s likely long-term care journey and associated costs.

For clients, it’s about making their future tangible and understandable in a realistic manner that avoids unfortunately common fear tactics that have been used to motivate LTC planning historically. For advisers, it opens the door to a far more productive and data-driven conversation that empowers deeper relationships with clients and their families.

Better conversations, better outcomes

Armed with precise, relatable insights, advisers can guide clients toward real action instead of vague what-ifs. The right AI-driven tools should allow advisers to:

Start earlier. Clients are more willing to engage when they see how LTC could realistically impact their lives and families.

Make it personal. Custom projections that can speak to each client’s unique situation are far easier to follow and engage with than national averages or complex charts.

Accelerate decisions. Clear insights help clients move faster and more confidently from awareness to action, whether that means exploring various LTC coverage products, such as hybrid LTC policies, adjusting a financial plan or bringing adult children into the planning conversation.

And perhaps most importantly, it helps overcome the emotional resistance that has long stalled LTC planning in many offices across the country.

A human touch still matters

Even with the most powerful AI tools, LTC still is a difficult conversation for clients to take on by themselves, and they often benefit from the empathy and deeper discussions that an adviser or insurance agent can provide in real-time.

Long-term care involves sensitive family dynamics, emotional decision-making, and complex tradeoffs. AI can help paint a clearer picture, but clients still need trusted guidance to make sense of the information and build a plan that aligns with their values, goals and concerns.

That’s where independent agents have a distinct edge. As experts in building relationships and navigating the many products on the market, from traditional LTC insurance to hybrid life policies, annuities and short-term care options, AI helps make those conversations more impactful, early and effective.

A new opportunity for agents

As America’s population ages and caregiving demands grow, families are desperate for guidance. Families have struggled to engage in the conversation for decades with generic national averages and basic ZIP code-based cost tools. Families need personalized, forward-looking plans that they trust to create peace of mind and solve for some of the largest challenges facing their retirement plans and their late-stage quality of life.

Agents who embrace these tools can lead the conversation, win trust, and grow their business in the process. Long-term care has rarely ever been a one-size-fits-all issue, and the solutions in this space have been anything but simple.

With AI-powered insights and a human-centered approach, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity on our hands to serve the largest set of incoming retirees, baby boomers, with a meaningful yet simplified planning process with empathetic AI tooling.