Health and wealth are not two separate issues: They are intertwined. And financial professionals and employers need to take the lead in bringing that point home, say financial industry thought leaders.
For example, financial advisors at Bank of America Merrill Lynch now receive longevity training along with investment training, said Kevin Crain, the bank’s head of workplace financial solutions. Crain is in the thick of the bank’s planning in these areas.
“Advisors questioned at first why they were getting longevity training,” Crain said in an interview with Financial Advisor. “They wanted to know what that had to do with financial advice. This is not how they traditionally think about finances. But we have now had more than 2,000 advisors go through longevity training.”
Crain made the comments after a recent presentation at a New York City conference, “Financial Wellness for Longer Lives: New Approaches to Working and Saving.” The conference was sponsored by the Global Coalition on Aging, AARP New York and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
“Advisors should be trained to see cognitive decline,” Crain said in his presentation, “to see if a client is beginning to have problems.”
The issues are important to advisors because cognitive decline affects financial decisions. The issues are also important to workers and employers, who need to recognize that health is tied directly to finances and financial stress, Crain said.
He referred to studies saying that 56 percent of employees are stressed by their finances and 53 percent said it interfered with their work and health. Fifty-six percent also said they were not saving enough money to reach their financial goals because of health-care costs.
“That brings us full circle. Health equals wealth,” he said.
One of the things employees need from employers is more help with financial education, he said, but it needs to be done one-on-one. “When employers provide help, it leads to employees taking action,” Crain said. “The employer is an important part of the solution. A company’s human resources department should be thought of as a wellness center.”
Employers are going to have to provide financial planning assistance if they want to keep talented workers, just as they now provide health benefits in order to compete for employees, agreed Dave Paulsen, the executive vice president and chief distribution officer at Transamerica.