Washington's payroll tax is live. More states are coming. Your employer clients are going to ask you about long-term care -- and right now, most brokers don't have an answer. Hollowtree gives you one.
Schedule a Partner ConversationState mandates are turning long-term care from a niche topic into a boardroom conversation. When your client's CFO asks what their payroll tax exposure is and what they can do about it, you need an answer -- not a referral to Google.
Voluntary LTC is becoming a standard part of the broker toolkit. The employers already in your book have employees who need this coverage and don't know it's available through their benefits program.
LTC has its own carrier landscape, its own underwriting rules, and its own regulatory environment. It's a specialty. You don't need to learn it. You need a partner who already has.
Traditional LTC underwriting declines a significant percentage of applicants. Guaranteed issue group programs eliminate that barrier entirely. Higher participation, better economics, happier clients.
Washington's LTC payroll tax has been live since 2023. California, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and several other states have active legislation in various stages. When these mandates pass -- and the trajectory is clear -- every employer with W2 employees in those states will face a new payroll tax.
That means every one of those employers will turn to their benefits broker and ask: what do we do about this?
If your answer is “I'm not sure” or “let me look into it,” you've lost the initiative. Someone else -- a specialist, a competitor, a consultant -- will fill that gap. The broker who brings the solution proactively is the broker who deepens the relationship.
You don't need to become an LTC expert overnight. You need a partner who already is one.
If you've never placed group LTC before, here's why: it hasn't historically been a standard employer benefit. It was an individual product sold by financial advisors and life insurance agents. Employers weren't involved. State mandates changed that. When Washington imposed a payroll tax to fund a public LTC program, it created an employer-level problem for the first time. And with that problem came an employer-level solution: voluntary group LTC programs that give employees qualifying coverage to opt out of the state tax.
This is a new product category. The carrier landscape is different from health or life. The underwriting is different -- guaranteed issue means no medical questions and no declinations. The enrollment model is different -- off-cycle, direct-to-employee, independent of open enrollment. And the regulatory environment is state-specific and evolving fast.
All of it is a reason to partner with a specialist. You bring the client relationship and the trust you've built. We bring the LTC expertise, the carrier relationships, and the enrollment infrastructure. Together, your client gets something neither of us could deliver alone.
This is the same model we use for disability insurance partnerships, and the principle is identical: we are not trying to take your client.
Hollowtree specializes in two things -- disability insurance and long-term care. When you have an employer client who needs LTC expertise, you bring us in. We handle everything: program design, carrier selection, employee communications, enrollment, premium collection, and ongoing administration. Your client relationship stays with you. Your health, dental, vision, life, and every other line stays with you.
You're not outsourcing your client. You're adding a capability that didn't exist in your practice before. The result: your client gets a well-designed LTC program, their employees get access to guaranteed issue coverage they can't get on their own, and you look like you have the depth of a much larger firm.
We monitor every state LTC mandate -- what's active, what's pending, what's proposed, and what the opt-out requirements are in each. When you sit down with a client, you'll know exactly where their state stands and what the timeline looks like.
We provide you with "CFO-ready" slides for every mandate state to simplify your renewal presentations.
Every eligible employee can participate regardless of health history. No medical questionnaires, no declinations, no awkward situations where employees are told they don't qualify. This drives participation rates that underwritten programs can't match.
Access to A-rated, nationally recognized carriers specializing in group-chassis LTC.
Mobile-friendly platform, no logins, no paper. We run omnichannel communications -- email, text, optional mailers -- that educate employees and drive enrollment. Average enrollment time: 15 minutes. The whole program is live in four weeks.
Premium collection via ACH direct debit (no payroll integration needed), ongoing participant support, annual program reviews, and claims advocacy. Your client gets continuous service without adding to your team's workload.
Every participant gets access to expert care coaches who help with caregiving challenges -- finding providers, understanding care options, coordinating family logistics. It's an immediate, tangible benefit that employees value from day one.
Why this matters for you: Cariloop creates "Day One" value, reducing the "buyer's remorse" common with long-horizon insurance products and increasing your persistency rates.
This is the information your clients are going to ask you about. Here's where things stand:
WA Cares has been collecting payroll taxes since 2023. Tax rate: 0.58% of wages, no cap. Employees who secured qualifying private LTC coverage before the initial deadline received a permanent exemption. New employees and those who missed the window are paying the tax.
Active legislation is being designed. California's program is expected to be significantly larger than Washington's given the state's population and workforce size. Opt-out provisions are still being debated.
Legislation has been introduced with bipartisan interest. Program structure and tax rates are under development.
Multiple states have introduced LTC payroll tax bills or formed study commissions. The pipeline is growing.
For your multi-state clients, the exposure is cumulative. An employer with employees in Washington, California, and New York could face three separate payroll taxes if they don't have opt-out programs in place.
I'd never brought LTC to a client before. Hollowtree made me look like I had a whole team behind me. The client was impressed, the enrollment was smooth, and now I have three more groups asking for the same thing.
-- Benefits Broker, Mid-Atlantic Region
Hollowtree provides market-leading monthly commissions for the life of the case. We handle the filing, and you receive transparent, recurring revenue as the Broker of Record.
Our sweet spot is 50 to 5,000 lives. For groups over 500, we can often negotiate custom plan designs and deeper rate credits.
We sign a mutual non-compete. We are your back-office specialist; we never cross-sell health, dental, or life products.
If a client is asking now, we can provide a "State Mandate Exposure Report" within 48 hours to help you lead that meeting.
Absolutely. Many of our broker partners started with one and added the other. The partnership model is the same for both -- you keep the client, we handle the specialty lines.
You don't need to commit to anything. Pick the one employer client who you think would benefit most from an LTC conversation -- maybe they're in a mandate state, maybe they have an aging workforce, maybe their CFO has been asking questions. A 15-minute call with us is enough to map out how that conversation would go and what you'd bring to the table.
Book a 15-Minute “Mandate Strategy” Call