Mastering Financial Planning for Aging Clients
Are you effectively servicing your aging client base? Most seniors expect to age in place – and if they are healthy enough both physically and mentally, they may very well be able to do so.
Today, seniors likely anticipate enjoying many years between retirement and death, but not everyone will experience the happy and healthy retirement they may have envisioned. As a result, they will need to make some difficult decisions.
As an advisor or any other kind of financial service provider, you’re likely familiar with the special needs that often accompany servicing aging clients. As people age, they’ll start to notice some changes. Sometimes they may start forgetting important things or making questionable financial decisions.
What if their health starts to fail and they need help managing more than just their finances? What if they have the money to move into assisted living when it is time, but they simply don’t want to? They may develop depression due to losing close friends or dear family members, leaving them lonely and possibly without loved ones that can help and support them. Their documents may even refer to caretakers that have since become incapacitated. As their advisor, how can you help aging clients through these tough challenges?
Your Role as an Advisor
As an advisor, you have a fiduciary responsibility to protect your clients and their assets. To keep a client’s assets over time, you need to be prepared to deal with all of their life changes and events. Financial planning for seniors presents unique challenges. You must have a grasp on their situation, who might be influencing them, and the resources that they might need to access. Aging clients are often vulnerable, and if you don’t proceed carefully and thoroughly, you might make yourself vulnerable to liability, as well.
Ignoring the changing dynamics around financial care management for aging clients can invite unfortunate consequences: Leaving a client’s assets at risk of predation from malicious interests could spell disaster. Senior clients may even make decisions that aren’t in their best interests due to dementia or ailing health. If this occurs and they do not have the proper documentation in place, the resulting chaos could prove exceedingly difficult to untangle.
Even if you’ve worked in the financial services industry for decades, you might not have the skills to serve the aging client well. You may have plenty of experience in smart investment strategies and comprehensive financial plans, but assisting senior clients might introduce unfamiliar complications. The Collaborative can provide the necessary expertise to round out your ability to serve this market. With our proprietary program, Financial Care Management: The New Reality in Retirement and Distribution Planning, and the plethora of resources we provide for financial advisors, we can equip you with everything you need to serve any kind of client.
Finding the Right Solution
Like our other professional development programs, the Financial Care Management program embodies our mission to provide members of the financial services industry with a solution-based platform for servicing aging clients. Investors entering retirement age (or well into their golden years) are looking for support with managing their affairs and discovering creative ways to live a robust and healthy life. Financial advisors who can provide support and sound guidance for this market will find themselves well-positioned to anticipate and address the needs of not only new clients that fit that demographic, but also existing clients that happen to be aging into that demographic.
Many advisors believe that an estate plan, a will, and long-term care insurance will fully cover their aging clients’ needs. However, there are countless other decisions that these clients, their children and their caregivers may be struggling to make. Our free guide, Addressing Financial Planning Concerns as Your Clients Age: The Top Ten Mistakes Most Investors Make, will help you identify the challenges faced by your aging clients and begin having a productive dialogue. Download it today and start the conversation. Looking to enhance your sales skills as an advisor to a more general audience? Don’t forget to check out Advisor’s Sales Academy, our proprietary program designed to help both new and veteran advisors hone their sales techniques and grow their firms. Alternatively, browse our extensive offering of professional development books to explore other ways to hone your skills.
To learn more about The Collaborative and the invaluable services we provide for today’s professionals, call us at 508.359.8216 or contact us online today!
Do you know the mistakes your clients make as they age?
Our FREE guide Addressing Financial Planning Concerns as Your Clients Age: The Top Ten Mistakes Most Investors Make will help you identify the challenges faced by your aging clients and begin having a productive dialogue. Download it today and start the conversation!