Serious illness happens and financial planners should be taking that into consideration for every financial plan, physician and financial advisor Carolyn McClanahan said.
McClanahan, who guides many of her clients through diagnoses of serious illnesses, said her firm, Life Planning Partners, does annual estate plan reviews for clients. “We have all the estate documents. We make sure we already know who their surrogate is, and this is when people are healthy,” she said, adding that “when the poop hits the fan, it’s going to make it a heck of a lot easier” when a client falls ill.
McClanahan was the moderator of a panel last week at the 2024 Invest in Women conference in West Palm Beach, Fla., sponsored by Financial Advisor. The panel, which dealt with how advisors can help seriously ill clients navigate emotional and financial challenges, included three financial advisors who have faced or are facing serious illnesses. They said their personal experiences have not only given them insights into their own struggles but also have provided a framework in dealing with sick clients.
Tina Powell, who is being treated for stage-4 lung cancer, which was diagnosed in January after an “executive physical,” said the first thing advisors could do to support clients diagnosed with a serious illness is to “just make yourself available,” and conversations should be empathetic and compassionate, she said. “And you don’t even have to worry about going crazy about what to say; just say I am really sorry about you getting this diagnosis,” she said.
On the planning side, Powell, a partner and chief of community at Intention.ly a marketing engine for financial, wealth and technology firms, suggests creating a central repository of everything related to the client’s finances, such as beneficiaries, 401(k) and disability policy. “And make sure that the benefits package of your clients and even your own firms is the best that it could be,” she said.
Powell said she is fortunate that her firm recently changed insurance providers to one that not only offer guaranteed life and disability coverage but also serves as an advocate for her. “I now have somebody that I can work with on my behalf, a dedicated advocate who knows when I am going for procedures,” she said, adding that her medication, which costs $17,000 for a 30-day supply, is covered by the insurance. But she cautioned that not everything is covered by insurance and advisors working with sick clients need to understand that.
One of the things Catherine Burgess said she does in her practice is to set aside time to go through annual benefits enrollment with her clients so that they make the right decisions. Burgess, a first vice president with Wells Fargo Advisors in Boston, said this was something she did on a small scale before she was diagnosed with stage-3 ovarian cancer in January 2016, but it has become an annual event in her practice.
She also advises her preretiree clients who are looking to leave their companies for another employer to take their disability insurance with them because if they get ill, insurance companies will no longer underwrite them.
When Antoinette Rodriguez was diagnosed with 9-11-related breast cancer, one of the first people she reached out to was her friend Bruce Feiler, author of the book, "The Council of Dads," which was developed into a TV series in 2020. The book, written in 2010, described Feiler’s battle with bone cancer and his search for back-up dads for his children in the event he died.
Rodriquez, a former Merrill Lynch wealth manager and founder of MarFi Million Dollar Academy, said the first thing Feiler told her was to put a council of people together. At the time, she was a single mother with a teenage daughter. Her “counsel of humans,” she said, included a few close friends and her financial advisor. It was important to include her advisor because advisors, she said, are in a unique position to quarterback for all the professionals involved during the client’s illness.
“The one thing you don’t want to have to do is to explain over and over where you are and what you’re doing. So, a big part of the role of the advisor would be to quarterback those other experts and be the central repository of feedback,” she said.
McClanahan also suggested that advisors create a triage list with the client of what needs to be done, including beneficiaries’ files, and rank it from most important to least important. And this should be done before the client begins any chemotherapy or other drug treatments, she said. ““Do what you can to help to find [the documents and forms] they need … fill out the paperwork so they will only have to sign it,” she said. “Do as much as of the legwork as possible and make sure it gets done.”
The panelists agreed that disclosing their illness to clients and friends was difficult. In fact, Rodriguez said she did not disclose her cancer to her clients while she was battling it, but after the fact, she said she realized that she probably should have because once they found out they were “absolutely fantastic."
Powell said she came to the decision to tell everyone at once by sharing it on social media because she said she wanted to spare herself “the amount of energy that it would have taken her to get through it” by telling people individually. It turned out to be the right decision, she said.
“It invited people, circumstances, conversations and opportunities. Things in my life started to magically show up,” she said, noting that one of the things that happened was finding out and connecting with a relative of a fellow financial professional who was also a stage-4 lung cancer survivor.
And because there is so much focus on the client going through the illness, Burgess pointed out that advisors often lose sight of caregivers who are also struggling to cope with the illness of a loved one. She noted that she had been together with her partner for nearly two years when she got diagnosed, “and here she is dealing with someone who is suppose o die.”
Burgess said one of the things she has learned to do as she works with clients is to check in with caregivers and have a separate phone conversation with them. “They are taking a lot of that emotional burden from us, so I think it’s a big part of that planning conversation for you to engage both whether it’s a significant other, a best friend or a family member,” she said.
While a diagnosis of a serious illness will elicit different reactions among people, the panelists said having a supportive team makes all the difference. And when asked what the most important advice they would give advisors working with seriously ill clients, Burgess said hers would be to listen and laugh. “Let them talk and if you can, interject laughter in some capacity. Get their mind off it.”
“Just understand that there will be times when they will not be able to respond, and you need to give them permission to not respond,” Rodriguez added. She also noted that it is important to learn who are the council members.
And Powell said, “just show up. People will remember you for the smallest act.”