Spending the money that you’ve spent a lifetime collecting might be even more difficult to manage than the actual accumulation, and it requires the aid of a financial advisor, according to Anne Ackerley, head of BlackRock's Retirement Group.

To make sure clients don’t run out of money, advisors will require special skills when working with clients in retirement, when they are spending the money they earned and saved earlier in life. That was Ackerley’s takeaway in a panel held during the second day of the “Next Chapter—ReThinking Retirement” virtual conference hosted by Financial Advisor.

Ackerley is head of the defined contribution practice for the United States and Canada at BlackRock, the financial industry’s largest defined contribution investment-only provider. The unit’s goal is to “build more intuitive, resilient retirement solutions so that more people can retire with dignity,” BlackRock says. Among her many honors, Ackerley has twice been named to Barron's “100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance” list.

Americans are living longer, but they have not done a very good job of figuring out how not to run out of money in retirement, Ackerley said Thursday. Planning to unwind savings is difficult because no one knows how the market will act in the future, and people do not know what their expenses will be in retirement.

“Retirement financial planning is complex. BlackRock tries to make it simple so people can make good decisions,” she explained. Part of the answer to simplifying retirement finances is to have collaboration across the various financial sectors.

“BlackRock is not an insurance company, but we collaborate with insurance companies for our clients,” she said. “Financial service providers need to collaborate more to help clients.”

A factor that is throwing a wrench in some planning is that advisors and their clients are often age contemporaries. “We are racing the clients to the exit” to retire, noted Steve Gresham, CEO of the Execution Project, a group of financial and business professionals who work with advisors on retirement solutions. (The Execution Project is also a sponsor of the Next Chapter conference.) Gresham conducted the interview with Ackerley.

Improving the financial literacy of clients, starting early in life, will improve retirement outcomes, Ackerley said. “We need to find ways to get information to clients when they need it.” The lack of information is a big obstacle clients face when trying to make retirement decisions, she said.

Asked what she has learned as a leader in the financial world, Ackerley said she wishes she had known earlier that she did not have to have all the answers to every problem. “We would get better answers, faster,” if leaders knew they did not have to feel threatened by not knowing everything.” More important are passion and empathy to successfully guide clients, she said.

“If you do not have passion about the financial business, you do not deserve your seat” at the table, she said.