The last time that the question being asked by Patrick Jenkins was being addressed by “financial services companies” (like Commercial Union) , was in the early days of the 1990s when as an IFA I discussed with mature clients investing their cash in an insurance that would pay out if they had need of social care (at home or in a residential home). I don’t think that I persuaded one person or couple to let go of their hard-earned in favour of an insurance against a situation they expected to be sorted by the NHS or DSS (as the DWP was called in those days).

The reason the question is being asked of what are now called “finance groups” is because  Baroness Louise Casey, who chairs a government-appointed commission on adult social care, has been told by Andy Burnham to expedite an already planned report and publish recommendations next year.

The FT’s Patrick Jenkins sums up the problem facing Casey and Burnham

This is unappealing to everyone , including the “finance groups” who would rather money was invested with them in workplace pensions and the like.

I cast my mind back to the 1990s! The current range of immediate needs and “lifetime care” annuities can be bought with loose change in the back pockets of the rich (say £200,000 and you’re talking full insurance at retirement).

If you don’t have the money in your back market, try equity release from your by-now unmortgaged property or better still the money sitting in your workplace savings pension plan. Here is where insurers who write annuities could find a way to make them more relevant to those of us , terrified of becoming a burden on our children when alive. I have to make this point as all the noise is about becoming an IHT  menace when dead.

Jenkins flirts with these ideas as he sees a Government not able to afford to provide the insurance of a Dilnot style cap on what we have to find for ourselves too much for the Exchequer.

Jenkins advocates encouragement for people to buy the kinds of insurance outlined above by offering tax incentives for those who sacrifice capital for security.

To make both insurance and savings products more attractive, basic versions could be made available at low cost and tax breaks could be used to incentivise the direction of funds into long-term stock market investment — another government aim.

I must say, the bet for a Commission to make a difference this parliament looks better laid on Baroness Louise Casey and her Social Care work than Jennie Drake on another pensions commission. Social Care I looks more likely to throw up solutions than Pensions Commission II.