Are You Ready for Your Clients to Live to 100?

The gee-whiz factor may have dimmed with respect to digital voice assistants, drones and even, among the jaded, flying cars. But in the next decade, stunning high-tech developments will revolutionize every major industry on the planet. So says futurist Peter Diamandis, founder of more than 20 leading-edge tech companies, in an interview with ThinkAdvisor.

Prominent among rapidly accelerating converging technologies are those that will extend the human life span, not merely by years but by quality years.

Indeed, to help people plan financially for feeling as vital at 100 years old as they did at 50 or 60, the advisory industry will require a transformation, argues Diamandis, who forecasts the longevity revolution to create a multitrillion-dollar marketplace.

Named by Fortune one of The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders, the bestselling author of “Abundance” and “BOLD” has just released a new book, “The Future is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries and Our Lives,” written with Steven Kotler (Simon & Schuster-Jan. 28).

“For … anyone sufficiently nimble and adventurous, the opportunities will be incredible,” writes Diamandis, a super-successful entrepreneur, who has a medical degree from Harvard.

He has certainly been nimble and adventurous, having recognized big present-day tech opportunities as early as three decades ago.

Companies that Diamandis, 58, has founded or co-founded include Human Longevity Inc.,  genomics and cell therapy-based and focused on extending the healthy lifespan; Space Adventures, the leading space-tourism company, which has flown eight private missions since 2001; and BOLD Capital Partners, a venture capital firm with funds that invest in early-stage and growth tech companies.

In the interview, he answers questions that include: When is the best time to invest in an exponential technology? How will the health insurance and life insurance industries change in the near future? How will new business models in digital currencies impact banking and investing? What lies ahead for FAs in the next decade now that high-tech advisory has elbowed into their turf?

ThinkAdvisor recently held a phone interview with Diamandis, a Bronx, New York-born, Long Island-bred physician’s son who earned molecular genetics and aerospace engineering degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.D. from Harvard.

Here are excerpts from our forward-focused conversation:

THINKADVISOR: Financial advisors worried that robo-advisors would eliminate them. They’re less fearful today. How concerned should they be?

PETER DIAMANDIS: The next decade is not about displacing or replacing. It’s about human partnering with technology. The physician is going to work with artificial intelligence to do diagnoses. The lawyer will use AI to do contract evaluations. And [similar] changes will occur with financial advisors. People will do what humans do best in terms of relationships, and technology will automate what’s routine.

You’re extremely enthusiastic about the longevity revolution. Just what does it entail, and what’s it worth to business?

It’s about looking good, feeling good, walking well — being as vital at 100 years old as you were at 50 or 60. If there are technologies and therapies available that can add 10 or 20 years to your life, that’s a multitrillion-dollar marketplace. And as we add 10 years to our healthy life span in this next decade, we’ll also continue to move forward even further. We’ll have new breakthroughs that are likely to add an additional 10 years in the following decade.

How big are the investments in companies working on longevity-related therapies?

Billions of dollars. And given all the breakthroughs in sequencing [the human genome], machine learning, CRISPR technology [Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. CRISPR changes DNA and is “the leading weapon in the fight against genetic diseases,” Diamandis writes] and massive data processing, we’re now beginning to understand why we age.

What implications does the longevity revolution have on retirement?

[Technology] is pushing out aging. There are scientists now who consider aging to be a disease, and therefore our focus should not only be on how to slow or stop it, but can we reverse it? People need to understand that science is going to give us a longer, healthier life. So have you saved enough money for that?

You write that workers have a tough time saving for retirement because part of the brain shuts down when they try to envision themselves in the future. What can be done to defeat this?

Ultimately, that’s going to be the job of financial advisors, and health insurance and life insurance companies — that is, they’ll provide that service. The financial advisory world will need a transformation to help people plan properly for what’s happening.

There are six growth cycles of exponential technologies: digitalization, deception, disruption, demonetization, dematerialization and democratization, you say. At what stage is it best to invest in such a technology?

There’s no best time. The best time to invest is [when you] invest in an application of a [specific] technology. For example, 3D printing is a 30-year-old technology, but I wouldn’t have invested in it so early on [i.e., before printer prices fell, performance rose, convergences with other technologies took place and certain applications occurred].

What are some of the most important biotechnologies in clinical trials today?  

They include stem cell replenishment and senolytic [drugs], which kill the “zombie” cells [aging, deteriorating cells] that accumulate in our bodies and cause inflammatory response.