“I think it's very similar to when I first started back in the late ’90s, when estate planning was the buzz and the hype. What we saw then is that planners were trying to work out how to do this thing called estate planning. It really seemed that estate planning was something you did after and separately from financial planning.”

She said aged care is much the same and is just contingency planning around what happens if, and when, an individual's health declines.

Biti said statistics show for a 65-year-old male, there is a 68 per cent chance they need aged care somewhere in the rest of their life, while for women it's about a 48 per cent chance.

“That means more than half our current retirees are going to need some sort of aged care. It doesn’t mean residential, but does mean extra care.”

“The data also shows that 80 per cent of retirees said they're not prepared [for this contingency], 70 per cent said they're worried about the costs, and 30 per cent are worried about being a burden financially on the kids.”

She said it is now often up to the children of those who find themselves in need of care, wondering how they are going to fund it, which can often have an impact on their own retirement savings.

“Whether you’re talking to a younger wealth accumulator, a pre-retiree or somebody moving into retirement, currently we now look at the contingency planning of what will happen when they pass away,” Biti said.

“And you build that into every investment decision, into your superannuation with death benefits. Now we must also build into the conversation what will happen before that point of death.”

Advisers need to integrate into estate planning conversations strategies about what happens to their clients in that last part of retirement, and how they may be looked after.

“It's about creating awareness for your clients that this is a really fundamental part of life. We should all expect that there is this period of frailty before death, and we should all be thinking about what it means to me,” Biti said.

“You don’t need to be experts in this, but advisers need to be aware of the issues. You need to have the basics and the conversations to create awareness with your clients and be proactive in this space.

“It's about building a contingency plan. What's important to you as you age? What would you like to see? Because it's not just about getting access to care. It's about how we live the best quality of life, no matter what complications life brings us.”