5 Sinkholes in Your Competitors' Retirement Services: Transamerica Center Survey

 By Allison Bell | September 03, 2020 at 05:51 PM

Here are 5 gaps in the services retirees with financial professionals told the Transamerica center they are getting from their financial professionals....

5. Retirement Investment Recommendations

About 80% of the survey participants said they get retirement investment recommendations .

4. Retirement Income Needs Calculations

Just 31% of the survey participants said their financial professionals provide retirement income needs calculations.

3. Income Planning

Barely 23% of the survey participants said their financial professionals "develop strategies for spending down savings to ensure they last my lifetime."

2. Inheritance and Estate Planning

About 17% of the survey participants said their financial professionals talk about passing assets on to loved ones, and 16% said their financial professionals provide recommendations for retirement-related products, including life insurance.

1. Long-Term Care Planning

The "need is still there," but your colleagues, mostly, are not: 9% of the survey participants said their financial professionals help them plan for assisted living and long-term care needs. Another 8% said their financial professionals help them with health care expenses.

The press releases and articles may make it sound as if all of your colleagues are providing extreme holistic retirement planning, with services ranging from providing Medicare supplement insurance, to sophisticated income planning, to keeping ants off their picnic blankets.

The Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies has a new survey report that implies, based on what retirees say their financial professionals actually do, that many of the retirees’ financial professionals do little beyond selling investment products.

Resources

·        A copy of the Transamerica center survey report is available here.

·        An article about an earlier Transamerica center survey report is available here.

The center has published data supporting that conclusion in a report based on a survey of 2,040 self-identified retirees conducted from November through December 2019. All of the participants were ages 50 or older, described themselves as a retired, and had worked for for-profit companies with one or more employees for most of their careers.

The center also included data from a survey, of 411 U.S. adult retirees, ages 50 and older, that was conducted in June.

The center sponsored both surveys to see how U.S. retirees are doing, and they conducted the second to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The survey team found, for example, that:

·        About 13% of the participants in the bigger survey reported having $100,000 or more in annual household income.

·        About 3% of the participants described themselves as being Lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, and that more than 1% classifying themselves as being transgender or “Other,” rather than as male or female.

·        About 26% of the participants reported having more than $10,000 in non-mortgage debt.

Only 31% said they have been working with some kind of professional financial advisor to help management retirement savings or investments.

https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2020/09/03/5-sinkholes-in-your-competitors-retirement-services-transamerica-center-survey/?kw=5%20Sinkholes%20in%20Your%20Competitors%27%20Retirement%20Services:%20Transamerica%20Center%20Survey&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=lifehealthnewsflash&utm_content=20200903&utm_term=tadv