An industry veteran has encouraged financial planners to ensure advice given clients in retirement be tailored to their own personal situations and free from bias.
Speaking during the Vanguard 2022 Virtual Roadshow today, SuperEd and Retirement Essentials chair Jeremy Duffield reminded advisers to be considerate of clients’ differing goals and financial expectations during retirement.
“Everyone is different in retirement and we need to find the right solution for the client. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions in retirement land,” Duffield said.
“The client should understand what they can afford to spend, how long [their retirement savings are] likely to last, where the money is going to come from and the risks they’re really going to face – not just the investment risks, but the risks of not meeting their goals.”
To this end, he emphasised financial planners must put aside their personal preferences or previous experiences so as not to diminish the effectiveness of the advice they deliver.
“Even if we have strong biases about how we think someone should invest for retirement, we must resist the temptation to foist our preferences on a client for whom they’re not a match,” he said.
“That’s a really challenging thing for advisers to do, to differentiate between educating a client about what they could do and imposing on them solutions they think are in their best interest.”
He recommended advisers check annually whether the client’s goals have changed or if they can still be achieved, and the best means by which to achieve them.
“[There is a] golden opportunity I see in helping older clients in the golden years. For advisers who listen carefully to clients, get to know them and understand their retirement needs and offer sensible low-cost solutions, there’s a fantastic opportunity in retirement advice,” he noted.
