Ambassadors Share Retirement Planning Insights at FinServe Summit

The expert panelists, Terrell Dinkins, ChFC®, RICP®, Ande Frazier CFP®, CLU®, ChFC®, RICP®, BFA™, ChSNC®, CDFA®, CEPA, CExP, Ryan Swenson, RICP®, and Irv Rosenzweig, CFP®, ChFC®, CLU®, CRPS®, AEP®, AIF®, shared their insights into the evolving landscape of retirement planning and how advisors can navigate its increasing complexity.

Overcoming Key Retirement Planning Challenges Clients Face

Manganaro kicked off the discussion by asking about the key challenges clients face when it comes to retirement planning. For Dinkins, a major issue is the difficulty many clients face in imagining what their lives might look like — financially and socially — after they leave the workforce. She emphasized how data can help overcome this by alleviating fears and showcasing potential outcomes. “Numbers don’t lie,” she said.

Swenson agreed about the value of data and highlighted the impact of using visualization tools such as financial planning software to communicate clearly with clients.

“A lot of people are visual learners,” he explained. “By leveraging planning software, we can plug in their goals, savings rates, or withdrawal rates, and create graphs that make retirement planning feel real and actionable.”

Frazier added a key challenge can be the overwhelming amount and complexity of information about retirement. She said advisors can help by striking a balance between sharing their expertise and actively listening to their clients.

“One of the things that we can do as advisors is to take all the knowledge that we have and ask better questions and then actually shut up and listen,” she said. “We need to give clients the opportunity to think through their answers. This is a complex conversation, and sometimes they need a beat to gather their thoughts and express their concerns.”

The Role of Professional Education

When Manganaro turned to the role advisors can play in helping clients achieve their retirement goals, panelists emphasized the value of professional designations in enabling them to deliver targeted and high-impact retirement planning services. Both Dinkins and Rosenzweig credited their designations with deepening their ability to address the nuanced challenges of retirement planning.

“The Retirement Income Certified Professional® (RICP®) Program helped me paint a better picture for clients, especially when it comes to the social aspects of retirement,” Dinkins said.

The panelists also noted that growing their understanding of specific products was helpful in building well-rounded retirement strategies. When it comes to selecting the right products for clients, Rosenzweig explained that advisors and clients are inundated with messaging that paints certain products, such as annuities or reverse mortgages, as “bad.”

To help clients, said Rosenzweig, “You must eliminate bias and remain objective.”

“You can’t do that until you have the product knowledge,” he said. “It’s one of the things that I enjoy seeing from The College when new products hit the market.”

Tax Planning: A Cornerstone of Strategy

Tax management also emerged as an essential element of comprehensive retirement planning.

Frazier emphasized the importance of creating “tax diversification” within retirement portfolios. “We want clients to have tax-free accounts, tax-deferred accounts, and regular accounts to engineer their income in retirement,” Frazier explained. “This can help them stay in a lower tax bracket and ensure their Medicare premiums don’t go up.”

She also noted that the tax treatment of different retirement accounts has become increasingly complicated.

“Let's face it: the rules around IRAs and distributions and inherited IRAs and so on have become so complex, and there's not a lot of clarity even in the IRS guidelines on some of it,” she said. “So, the more knowledge that we can have in that area, the better our service will be to our clients.”

Addressing the Emotional Aspects of Retirement

Finally, the panelists agreed that advisors should not overlook the emotional aspects of retirement planning. Rosenzweig noted that clients often don’t spend enough time on legacy and estate planning because they don’t want to face questions of their own mortality.

Frazier agreed, and said, “Legacy planning is about coming to terms with the fact that this is the last stage of their life. It's coming to terms with what they want to leave their family or organizations they care about. That's one of the reasons they're not doing a lot of planning, because they can't deal with some of the emotional questions and conversations they need to. We, as advisors, have to guide those conversations. And we have to remember that we're dealing with a whole person, not just a part of a person when we're talking about retirement.”

More From The College

• Meet Our FinServe Network
• Enroll in Our Retirement Income Certified Professional® (RICP®) Designation
• Learn About Our Tax Planning Certified Professional™ (TPCP™) Program