At Retirement Income Symposium, Henkel’s Shopping List

The five-step list includes:

• Gathering information, which is where data aggregation of all a client’s accounts is highly desirable;
• Product and asset selection, where he acknowledged that “people like us need to provide better tools to people like you,” especially in the area of behavioral finance;
• Implementation of a solution using those products;
• Managing the solution, which must include tax management, and finally;
• Reporting, where an outcome-oriented advice approach will help “make assets sticky.”

Henkel (left) said there remains a need for advisors to be better educated on retirement income, but also that there are “lots of things we need to do as tool providers.” He did mention some interesting product solutions, particularly hybrid products such as the TIPS ladder from PIMCO, and a commission-free single premium immediate annuity (SPIA) in the works from New York Life.

The day-and-a-half Symposium continues with presentations by Mark Tibergien, Mark Cortazzo, Blaine Aikin and Susan Hirshman.

Henkel is a regular blogger for AdvisorOne.com. His most recent blog is on the lessons learned for active asset allocation from the 2008-2009 financial and markets crisis. During his session, he disclosed that he’s working on a future blog that will address some of the capital markets assumptions that are used in Monte Carlo simulation.