Financial planners are moving away from investment type services and towards strategic services, especially aged care according to Aged Care Steps.
Aged Care Steps director, Assyat David, said the demand for aged care financial advice was increasing substantially from clients who tend to be children who look after their parents
She said advisers were reacting to the aged care demand by recognising the need to increase the type of value and support they give to their clients.
“They are also looking at more strategic services as opposed to investment type services and one of those services that they are particularly interested in is the aged care side,” she said.
“Hence, we’re finding that there are an increasing number of advisers from retail and industry super fund side and the accounting side, that are looking at seeking some kind of support whether it is accreditation training, marketing tools, financial planning software that they would use to help them implement aged care advice to clients.”
David said advisers had to plan for three stages of disability for clients over 65: no disability, some disability, and severe disability.
She said women over the age of 65 had 5.8 years of severe disability and men had 3.7 years, around 25 per cent of the rest of their life for women and 20 per cent for men.
David noted that advisers were increasingly finding it difficult to act as an investment adviser for their clients given what happened with the Global Financial Crisis and the recognition that advisers cannot control what the markets are doing or predict what they are doing over a short period of time.
“As a result we’re finding that advisers were more focused on managing a client’s investment portfolio and product selection and even though that’s still a part of their service the shift in emphasis is probably more and more moving towards acting more as a project manager or coach for a client and dealing with the strategic direction of where they are heading,” she said.
“When it comes to servicing the clients are looking for the ability for their adviser to act more like a coach for them, if you like, to help guide them through different options, help them understand what their strategy options are and be able to work with their other service providers whether it be their lawyers, estate planning perspective, their accountants from a tax perspective, and act more like a GP.”
