Premiums for long-term care insurance packages : sensitivity with respect to biometric assumptions

Long-term care insurance (LTCI) covers are rather recent products, in the framework of health insurance. It follows that specific biometric data are scanty; pricing and reserving problems then arise because of difficulties in the choice of appropriate technical bases. Different benefit structures imply different sensitivity degrees with respect to changes in biometric assumptions. Hence, an accurate sensitivity analysis can help in designing LTCI products and, in particular, in comparing stand-alone products to combined products, i.e., packages including LTCI benefits and other lifetime-related benefits. Numerical examples show, in particular, that the stand-alone cover is much riskier than all of the LTCI combined products that we have considered. As a consequence, the LTCI stand-alone cover is a highly “absorbing” product as regards capital requirements for solvency purposes.