Retirees remain lucrative propspects

The retiree market remains one of the truly lucrative avenues for financial planners to direct their businesses.

The retiree market remains one of the truly lucrative avenues for financial planners to direct their businesses.

US-based financial planner Andrew Lord says people over the age of 55 have more assets; less costs once their children leave home; and generally like to consult an adviser during office hours.

Lord told yesterday’s Zurich Financial Gurus conference that concentrating on self-funded retirees, or what he dubs “middle market millionaires”, has reshaped his planning practice into a highly profitable business.

“Before embarking on my strategy to target middle market millionaires, I re-searched the market for five years,” he says.

“I found that older people have more money than young people. In fact, in Austra-lia, 87 per cent of all wealth is held by people over the age of 55.”

Lord’s first step was to “laser beam” his focus on to older people. He stopped see-ing anyone under the age of 45. “In one year, I double my income,” he says.

His next step was to raise the bar 10 years to 55. “In the next year, I didn’t double my income but I doubled my revenue.”

And Lord says the retiree market is huge. He says there are 663,000 in Sydney that fit his criteria of a middle market millionaire.

“At that rate I could be busy for the next 200 years,” he says.

Retirees also come out trumps in comparison to high net worth individuals still in the prime years of their career, Lord says.

“Everyone is crawling over the high net worth individual looking for a piece of the action. This client is well connected and can be very difficult to service. They are what I call high revenue, high cost clients. Retirees on the other hand are high revenue, low cost.”