MetLife announced that it will stop selling individual long-term care insurance. It will also cease to include new enrollments into group and multi-life plans. This news was announced in a company-issued news release. The company says this move won’t impact current policyholders as long as they remit payment for their premiums on time.

According to the Wall Street Journal, extremely low interest rates are creating problems for insurance companies because it lowers their profitability. And since it looks like rates could remain low, life insurers are changing products they offer. They’re not able to provide the features they once could, and this includes long-term care insurance as well as retirement-income products. “MetLife remains committed to our current LTCI policyholders and certificateholders and will continue to ensure that they receive quality service, particularly when needed most — at time of claim,” Jodi Anatole, vice president, Long-Term Care Products, for MetLife said in a news release. “While this is a difficult decision, the financial challenges facing the LTCI industry in the current environment are well known.”

Those with long-term care insurance policies will likely face more premium rate increases. This type of insurance helps cover costs of in-home care or nursing home fees. The reason for the increases is due to the fact that many policyholders are living longer which means the claims they generate cost more.

For customers who mailed insurance payments to Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance last month, the company may not have received them. According to reports, a week’s worth of mail may never have reached the the state-backed property insurer. But despite the claim that some mail may not have made it, the US Postal Service as well as some customers aren’t so sure.

The USPS originally said that someone had completed a change of address form fraudulently, claiming they were with Florida Citizen’s Property Insurance. Another fraudulent claim was submitted via the Internet. Initially the post office thought some mail had been forwarded due to the illegal claim, but now they say that never happened. That’s because by July 1 the insurance company had responded to the USPS when prompted to confirm the change. Citizens did not confirm the change so the request was denied. “There is no evidence at this time to suggest that any mail was forwarded,” according to the USPS and ClaimsJournal.com.

But a spokesperson for Florida Citizen’s Property Insurance says the company received less mail than they normally would during the time period in question, June 14-28. That’s why the company is asking customers to make sure their checks were received and processed. “The systems designed to protect U.S. Postal Service customers did their job. Reporting throughout the state has claimed that as many as 1 million policy holders could have been affected. This is simply NOT true,” responded USPS Communications Director Joseph Breckenridge to ClaimsJournal.com, after media reports raised the prospect of lots of diverted mail. “In fact, there is no evidence whatever to suggest that this fraudulent change of address order caused any mail whatever to be forwarded. ”

The fraudulently filed forwarding address turned out to be an apartment complex and officials say the address did not receive any mail intended for the insurance company. “The quantity of mail received by a major firm like Citizens is very great. We’re talking about thousands upon thousands of pieces of mail every day. The operations of firms like Citizens are on such a scale that such an irregularity would be immediately obvious,” Breckenridge told CJ.

You could be overlooking an important way to save on your homeowners’ insurance. America’s economy is forcing many households to find new ways to be thrifty. Looking at the documents give n to you by your home insurance company can yield oft-ignored opportunities for thrift.

Most people know that they can reduce their homeowners’ insurance rates by changing their policies to have a bigger deductible. However, many people don’t know how many ways there are to get credits with their home insurance provider. With these credits, home insurance providers reward people who choose to improve their homes by lowering their annual rates, without increasing deductibles. Unlike the situation in which you lower the premium by increasing the deductible, you don’t stand to lose anything by taking advantage of these credits. You only stand to benefit.