Marketing Insights: Retirement Guidance Trends, Q3 2016

In this edition of the Marketing Insights, we focus on the one financial goal we all share – retirement. 

Since their inception, workplace retirement plans and personal retirement accounts have provided a stable base of assets for wealth management firms. It is estimated that within 10 years, as much as 80 percent of investable assets will be concentrated with pre-retirees and retirees.¹ Competition for those assets has been fierce for some time but as more baby boomers retire and begin to draw down their assets, an important battle is being fought on another front to engage millennials and secure the next wave of retirement assets.

Investors in both groups want help. Only 21 percent of investors said they were very confident they will have what they need for a comfortable retirement². More than half of people ages 18-24 and 65 percent of people ages 25-34 indicated that they want advice from their financial services providers.³  But the ground is shifting beneath wealth management firms when it comes to offering advice; with robo-advisors establishing a foothold and new rules from the Department of Labor regarding advice for retirement plan accounts.

New approaches continue to arrive on the scene. Some of the most interesting ones seek to combine automated solutions with a human advisor. Companies are having some success applying behavioral economic principles to simplifying the decision process. To maintain or grow market share in the long run, wealth management firms must continue to find ways to fight inertia and to educate millennials on the positive impact that saving today will have on their ability to retire on their terms.