Brighthouse LTC Rate Increases: What the Filings Show

In March 2024, Brighthouse Life Insurance Company asked Connecticut regulators to raise premiums on a block of long-term care policies by 167%. Almost a year later, on February 27, 2025, the Connecticut Insurance Department said no — it disapproved the increase outright, noting that increases it had already granted on the same block offset the need for another one.

That single "no" is the kind of headline that gets a worried policyholder's attention. It should not be read as a promise. The same closed block of Brighthouse coverage has drawn very different answers in different states, and a rejection in one capital carries no weight in another. This piece walks through what is actually verifiable in the public rate-filing record for Brighthouse's long-term care block — the requests, the outcomes, and the gap between them — and what an in-force policyholder should take from it.

First, which "Brighthouse" policy this is about

Long-term care coverage tied to the Brighthouse name is a common source of confusion, because more than one company can be involved. This analysis is strictly about the closed block of individual LTC policies held by Brighthouse Life Insurance Company — the legal entity that files these rate increases under its own name. Brighthouse spun off from MetLife in 2017; it stopped writing standalone long-term care insurance years ago and today sells only the SmartCare hybrid, not new standalone LTC.

That is not the same thing as every "MetLife-era" policy. MetLife retained some of its own long-term care blocks at the split, so a policy that originated with a MetLife agent is not automatically a Brighthouse obligation today. If you are unsure who actually stands behind your coverage, start with who pays your Brighthouse claim and what happened to your MetLife LTC policy. The ownership question got another layer in 2025, when Brighthouse itself agreed to be acquired by Aquarian — a change of owner that does not change your contract terms.

The filings on record

Three states give us a clear, publicly documented look at what Brighthouse has requested on this block and what regulators did with it. The pattern is not "big number, automatically approved."

Connecticut and Vermont are the two states where the full request-to-decision arc is on the record. Connecticut refused the increase. Vermont did not refuse it — but it cut a 343% ask down to a 49.8% approval and required the carrier to phase it in as two 25% steps on successive policy anniversaries rather than in one hit.

Pennsylvania is the honest caveat. Brighthouse has filed for LTC increases there, but the state's public record surfaces the filings without a final approved percentage attached, so this piece does not assign one. That is worth sitting with for a second: even for a data-focused site, the disposition of a years-old filing is not always retrievable from the public web — which is exactly why the section below explains how to check your own state directly.

Why the same carrier gets three different answers

The instinct after reading about Connecticut's refusal is to assume regulators are turning against these increases. The record does not support that reading, and it would be a dangerous thing for a policyholder to believe. Long-term care rate increases are adjudicated state by state, by independent insurance departments applying their own statutes, actuarial standards, and rate-increase caps. A disapproval in Hartford has no binding effect on a filing in Harrisburg, Montpelier, or your own state capital.

Connecticut's own reasoning makes the point: it disapproved the 167% request in part because it had already approved earlier increases on the block. In other words, the "no" was partly a function of prior "yeses." A state that has granted less in the past may be more, not less, likely to grant more now.

A disapproval is also not necessarily permanent. Insurers routinely return with revised actuarial support and re-file after a rejection. Treating Connecticut's 2025 decision as a closed door — a guarantee that Brighthouse will never raise rates on that block again — would be a misread of how the rate cycle works.

A "reduced" increase is still a large increase

Vermont is where the requested-versus-approved framing can quietly mislead. Cutting a 343% request to 49.8% looks like a win for policyholders, and relative to the ask, it is. But 49.8% is not a small number. For someone on a fixed retirement income, a roughly 50% premium increase — even split into two 25% steps — is a serious financial event, not a reprieve. The anchor a policyholder should hold onto is the dollar figure of the new premium, not the percentage the carrier didn't get. The right question is never "how much did the regulator knock off the request," it is "can I afford what was actually approved, and for how long."

How to find your own state's Brighthouse filing

Because outcomes vary so much by state, the single most useful thing you can do is look up the filing for your state rather than extrapolating from Connecticut or Vermont. Pennsylvania is a good worked example, because its department publishes LTC rate activity but the disposition can take digging:

1. Find your state insurance department's public rate-filing search — most run the SERFF Filing Access portal, and many also post a plain-language "long-term care rate increase requests" page.
2. Search by company name (Brighthouse Life Insurance Company) or, if you have it, the SERFF tracking number from a letter you received.
3. Open the filing's disposition document — that is where the approved percentage and effective date live, as opposed to the requested percentage on the cover.
4. If the disposition is not posted, a direct call or email to the department's consumer line will usually get you the final number.

The reason this matters: a policyholder in a state with a pending, undecided Brighthouse filing who reads only about Connecticut's refusal may wrongly assume their own increase is off the table, and plan around a hike that is still very much in play.

If a Brighthouse increase does land in your mailbox

Whatever the percentage, a rate-increase letter is not a bill you either pay or ignore. Every approved LTC increase in these states came with the standard menu of alternatives the carrier is required to offer, and the choice among them is the actual decision. Before doing anything, read the five options behind every rate-hike letter, then weigh the specific levers:

• Reduce the benefit — a lower daily benefit or shorter benefit period can hold your premium closer to today's level. The inflation-rider reduction decision is usually the highest-leverage version of this.
• Take the paid-up / nonforfeiture path — stopping premiums in exchange for a reduced, paid-up benefit. Understand contingent nonforfeiture before you treat "just stop paying" as walking away with nothing.
• Run the keep-or-drop math — not emotionally. Dropping a long-term care policy after years of premiums forfeits a large sunk asset, and is rarely the right move purely to escape one increase.

What this is not

This is a compilation of public rate-filing records, not insurance advice and not a prediction. Nothing here says your state will follow Connecticut and reject an increase, or Vermont and cut one — each department decides on its own, and past decisions do not bind future ones. It is also not a review of Brighthouse's SmartCare product or a carrier-versus-carrier ranking. It is a record of what was asked and what was decided, on the specific block held by Brighthouse Life Insurance Company.

Coverage scope

This is part of the Long Term Care Desk's carrier rate-history series, which reads the same public filings for the major closed and active blocks. For context on how Brighthouse's requests compare, see the records for Genworth, MassMutual, and the still-active Mutual of Omaha. Verified state dispositions will be added to this page as they enter the public record.