There’s certainly much to be said for the old adage of ‘healthy body, healthy mind’ and more people as they reach what might be described as ‘later life’ have taken this on board. Recent research suggests (perhaps unsurprisingly) that keeping the brain active, both at work and at play, is one way to stave off mental decline – indeed the study, published in the JAMA Neurology journal, found that those people regularly ‘training their brain’ throughout their lives and on into retirement could prevent dementia by as much as nine years.
The most beneficial hobbies suggested by the study were reading, an active social life and using a computer regularly – it is therefore no wonder that the number of ‘silver surfers’ actively using technology continues to grow each year. Keeping the mind active, coupled with healthy living and the progress we are seeing in medicine, will hopefully allow many more people in this country to expand their retirement years from just a handful to a couple of decades – maybe more.
While it is wonderful news that people are living longer it is very much the case that those in retirement may not have the means to enjoy this period in their lives if they have not prepared properly for it. Indeed, for many this period of preparation has already passed – it is now too late to put money away for the retirement rainy day and therefore new solutions have to be explored in order to maintain living standards, top-up the State pension, pay for home improvements, fund long-term care needs, the list goes on.
As every year passes and the number of pensioners increases the ability of the State to fund retirement living diminishes – this of course has been a huge problem for UK plc for a long time but now the situation is coming to a head as the demographics continue to go in one direction coupled with the financial uncertainty we have all had to deal with in recent times. What was it that ex-Treasury Secretary Liam Byrne said in his leaving letter from Government in 2010? “I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left.” Not particularly helpful but perhaps a neat summing up of the situation just four short years ago.
Since then, there have been a lot of tough decisions made and ones that should hopefully help the next generation of pensioners – certainly in terms of the provision of choice around pension pots and (dare I say it) an attempt to simplify the pension and benefit regimes. One thing is guaranteed – we will all be working longer as we get older so perhaps future generations will be much sharper of mind far longer into retirement – whatever age that might be.
The immediate needs of the retired population are not going to change however and this is why the provision of financial advice to this community is so vitally important. And it also can’t be a piecemeal provision either – those in later life need advisers who can look at their advice needs in the round, who can provide a variety of different solutions to different problems and/or are able to work with other specialists in terms of delivering a 360-degree offering. This is effectively why we launched the Later Life Academy – because we wanted to offer those advisers who, for example, might at the moment only be specialists in say equity release, access to other product areas which their clients might need but they might not be (currently) able to offer.
Later life guidance has to be looked at in the round and, as a bare minimum, specialist advisers must have the knowledge to be able to identify other needs outside their current scope and find solutions in those areas. In that sense, it requires advisers to continue educating themselves and taking in the knowledge across a wide range of areas. Advisers too require a healthy, active mind to keep up to date and support and help the needs of this growing client base – if we can create such a community then we are on our way to a much healthier profession advising a much healthier clientele.
