Advisers bullish on aged care advice services
Greater numbers of advice firms are recognising the business opportunities that offering aged care advice services can bring, with the majority of respondents in a recent survey indicating they offer some form of aged care advice.
A survey conducted jointly by Aged Care Steps and Swiss Re with 173 respondents from the financial services industry found that 51.2 per cent of advisers regularly promote aged care services with clients, and a further 26.7 per cent offer these services on a case-by-case basis.
The survey also indicated that 20.35 per cent or respondents don’t offer these services very often but would like to do so more.
Speaking at the launch of the results, Aged Care Steps director Assyat David said there are currently two camps within the advice industry: the group that have realised there is a need to talk about aged care and are actively doing something about it, and the other group who think it’s all too hard and are choosing to ignore it.
“Your clients are going to need aged care at some point in time, and so we pose the question of who your clients will turn to when they need aged care support? If it’s not you, then it’s somebody else and what does that mean in terms of risk for your business?” said Ms David.
In terms of the drivers for providing aged care advice, the main reason was to better service existing clients at 30.1 per cent, closely followed by opportunities to attract family members or friends of the aged care recipient as clients at 26.1 per cent.
Advisers also saw offering aged care advice as a good way of also providing intergenerational wealth transfer advice services at 20.8 per cent.
The surveyed showed that the target age groups for aged care advice tended to be in the 65 to 80 age bracket and the 80-plus age bracket.
“One of the misconceptions is that aged care is only relevant to the people who are in need of aged care, so you’re only talking about the 75-plus or 80-plus whereas in reality it’s actually quite spread and anyone from 50 can be targeted, sometimes someone even younger than 50,” said Ms David.
“You’re really looking at clients anywhere from 45 to 85 as the client target base. You can essentially target two different groups. One is the children, who might still have parents that are still alive, particularly the ones that might have a power of attorney on behalf of their parents, or who are the executor of the estate, because they’re the ones who organise everything on behalf of the family. The other group is the spouse perhaps.”
Miranda Brownlee
Miranda Brownlee is the deputy editor of SMSF Adviser, which is the leading source of news, strategy and educational content for professionals working in the SMSF sector.
Since joining the team in 2014, Miranda has been responsible for breaking some of the biggest superannuation stories in Australia, and has reported extensively on technical strategy and legislative updates.
Miranda also has broad business and financial services reporting experience, having written for titles including Investor Daily, ifa and Accountants Daily.
