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January 14, 2007 at 02:00 PM
For all the exploration and activity that’s taken place regarding the upcoming retirement of baby boomers, too little attention has been paid to a critical period encompassing the years just before and just after retirement.
Even less attention has been paid to the challenging issue of compliantly communicating with all those prospects.
This article explores both issues with the goal of identifying ways for maximizing the industry’s success. As it turns out, annuities are central to the story–and their sale will escalate due to the twin trends of retirement needs and web technology.
The first trend relates to the 10 years before and after retirement, what may be called the transition management phase of retirement. As will be seen, annuities will be needed to provide downside protection during this period.
First some background: In general, financial services companies have sought to highlight the differences between the accumulation and retirement distribution phases of financial life. While investing and tax strategies are divergent in these phases, the real story is much more complicated.
There is a critical third phase that needs to be addressed. It is the transition management phase. This phase bridges the accumulation and distribution phases, beginning 10 years prior to retirement and continuing for 10 years after. Over this 20-year period, the investor may transition from being risk averse to what may be described as loss averse.
This occurs for good reason. Approximately half of one’s total retirement assets are accumulated in the 10 years immediately preceding retirement, according to current industry understanding. Investment losses occurring during this transition period can have a potentially devastating, life-long negative impact on the level of retirement income able to be generated. So placing downside protection under the accumulated assets holds great appeal.
The 10 years immediately following retirement also require downside protection under the accumulated retirement assets, since the assets are now a critical component of long-term income generation success. The probability is high that investment losses in the first few years after retirement are likely to result in total exhaustion of portfolio assets. Research shows that while the risk of “portfolio ruin” is reduced in the later retirement years, it’s not entirely eliminated even in the second and third decades of retirement.
