Mississauga, ON – April 30, 2009 – Despite large numbers of baby boomers facing retirement in the coming years, 71 per cent of Canadians do not have a plan to cover the costs of caring for parents when they get older, according to an RBC Insurance/Ipsos Reid poll.
“Baby boomers are facing the added financial pressure of caring for their own kids, while also needing to care for elderly parents as well,” said John Young, president and CEO, RBC Life Insurance Company. “If an older parent or relative requires home or personal care, it can get very expensive and may jeopardize their financial security.”
The RBC Insurance poll also found that 48 per cent of Canadians do not know the cost of caring for an aging parent or relative in a nursing home or other care facility and 62 per cent do not know the costs of caring for an aging parent or relative in their homes.
The number of Canadian seniors is expected to nearly double and grow to 8 million by 2026, according to Statistics Canada. Many of these seniors may require expensive long term medical care. With a private room in a long term care facility costing a minimum of $2,125 per month, it’s important to have a financial plan in place that will help to cover these expenses and avoid draining your savings.
“People are living longer and that means retirement funds need to be securely preserved over a longer period of time” added Young. “Without a plan in place to cover expensive long term care costs, individuals would have to make some difficult lifestyle choices in order to make ends meet.”
Long term care insurance can help provide your clients and their families with benefits that would assist in covering the cost of health and personal care services for individuals who become unable to care for themselves.
Here are a few things for them to consider:
- Look at critical illness or disability insurance policies that have a long term care conversion option attached to them. These policies allow clients to switch over to a long term care insurance plan between the ages of 55 and 65 without a medical exam � thereby protecting their future insurability.
- Policies featuring a cost of living adjustment benefit can ensure that daily benefits are adjusted to match inflation.
- Future purchase options should be considered to make it easier for clients to buy additional coverage in the future without providing medical documentation. Some policies offer discounts for two or more policyholders living in the same home.
To find out more about offering RBC Life Insurance Company products, please contact RBC Insurance at 1-866-235-4332.
About RBC Insurance
RBC Insurance, through its operating entities, including RBC Life Insurance Company, provides a wide range of life, health, travel, home, auto, business insurance and reinsurance products as well as creditor services to more than five million North American clients. As a leading provider of individual living benefits and life insurance products in Canada, RBC Life Insurance Company offers a comprehensive portfolio of individual and group life and health insurance solutions, including term and universal life insurance, group benefits, disability, critical illness, and long term care insurance as well as segregated funds. These products are distributed through more than 17,000 independent brokers affiliated with producer groups, financial planning firms and stock brokerage firms, as well as through direct sales and a network of career sales representatives. For more information, please visit www.rbcinsurance.com.
About this survey
These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted on behalf of RBC Insurance from 03/27 to 04/10, 2008. For this survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 2251 Canadian adults was interviewed by telephone. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to within �2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult population of Canada been polled. The margin of error will be larger within regions and for other sub-groupings of the survey population. These data were weighted to ensure that the sample’s regional and age/sex composition reflects that of the actual Canadian population according to Census data.
