Mortgage broker launches retirement calculator

Mortgage Choice has launched a retirement calculator, claiming it is an ‘industry first' as it provides almost 100 per cent "certainty".

The mortgage aggregator's chief executive officer, John Flavell, said the retirement income calculator was the first of its kind as it offered "a certainty level of up to 95 per cent".

The calculator was developed by a fintech company, Investfit, and used "historical investment market data to project a person's income in retirement based on their current investment strategy", Flavell said.

The calculator also identified if there was an alternative strategy that might enable the client to "better optimise their income", he said.

Seniors income support would cost the government $44.7 billion this year, which was why people needed to firstly understand what their situation would look like in retirement, so they could then save more for their retirements, Flavell said.

Their retirement income calculator factored in "potential risks that people don't think about when planning their retirement", such as how long they may live for, the impact of inflation on goods and services they would need, and how market volatility would impact their retirement income, he said.

"The more basic calculators on the market don't take all of these risks into consideration. As such, users may be left with false expectations," Flavell said.