As “Peak 65” approaches, client concerns over retirement may be fueling curiosity about how to protect income in retirement
Inflation, geopolitical instability, and rising healthcare costs continue to have significant impacts on those in or approaching retirement, and RIAs say clients are understandably nervous. According to our joint RetireOne and Allianz 2023 RIA Protected Accumulation and Retirement Income survey, 63 percent of advisors report that clients are concerned over insufficient employer-provided retirement benefits, 85 percent report clients concerned about the insufficiency of Social Security benefits, and 97 percent report client concerns over the impact of inflation on their retirement portfolios.
At the same time, advisors expect lower-than-average returns for both US equities and US fixed income over the long term, which could explain why more than a third of advisors believe that the safe withdrawal rate is actually less than William Bengen’s often-cited 4 percent.
Given all this, it’s no wonder that nearly eight of ten RIA respondents say clients are asking about how to protect their income in retirement.
Though 59 percent of respondents report that they allocate at least a portion of client portfolios to annuities for decumulation, some remain skeptical of annuities, in spite of the fact that the most often-cited concerns (fees, liquidity, opacity, and complexity) have largely been addressed by today’s next-gen advisory solutions. Awareness is part of the problem; three in ten advisors report being unaware of the existence of fee-only annuities that, in some cases, do not have surrender charges and have much lower fees than commissionable annuities.
RetireOne and Allianz’s joint 2023 RIA Protected Accumulation and Retirement Income survey provides data and insights regarding the concerns and planning strategies of 200 IARs of RIAs. Read the infographic or download the executive summary to learn more.
