Cetera Financial Group announced the launch of a retirement income-focused tool for its affiliated advisors, the latest development on its technology roadmap. Called SetIncome, the tool can be used to create a retirement income plan that incorporates asset management models from Capital Group’s American Funds and fixed annuities from Allianz.
With baby boomers retiring in droves, advisors are searching for cost-effective ways to provide financial guidance for their clients. Cetera’s solution for advisors seeks to combine annuities and asset management strategies to create “an optimized income strategy” with “five clicks of a button,” according to the announcement. Those inputs, consisting of a client’s age, income goal in retirement, risk tolerance, name and the investable assets that the client is working with, are converted into a projection that an advisor can use to provide retirement guidance.
"The boomer generation in the U.S. continues to be largely unprepared for retirement: unrealistic in their expectations, and under-saved,” said Adam Antoniades, president of Cetera. Warning signs are even flashing for advisors who may be unprepared for their own succession, according to a report from Cerulli Associates.
The three firms behind the SetIncome tool are hoping it will fill a “critical gap,” said Jacqueline Hunt, a boardmember at Allianz. Allianz, Capital Group and Cetera “have come together to bring leading asset management and annuities solutions within a powerful technology platform to create better retirement outcomes,” she said, “effectively disrupting the retirement income landscape."
One of the stand-out features of the new tool is its ability to provide “prescriptive guidance,” said Bart Liro, investment director of portfolio solutions at Cetera. SetIncome combines risk optimizers, calculators and planning tools to provide feedback to the client and advisor, including the ability to periodically review the investing decisions that have been made in the past and see if there’s a better option going forward. That guidance will be “full cycle,” consisting of asset management, annuity modeling and show guidance.
“It's really providing a prescription for that person,” he said. “It's actually increasing that ability for an advisor to have a conversation about how capital markets work and what levers might need to be pulled, if you will, in order to meet a better ‘success-chance’ for an investor.”
Others are seeking to capitalize on the unprepared boomer trend too. Retirement-focused automated investing platforms, like United Income, which rolled out a Medicare decision-making tool earlier this year, and Kindur, which launched in April, have been marketing their services directly to investors. Kindur includes an annuity offering in addition to its ETF-based, automated investing, while United Income builds and manages custom ETF-based investment portfolios.
Online RIA Personal Capital debuted a “Retirement Paycheck” tool last year, designed to guide clients in how they withdraw money in retirement. Meanwhile, Envestnet graduated its Insurance Exchange, which includes annuities from six providers, out of the pilot phase just last month. The feature saw plenty of interest at the firm’s Advisor Summit earlier in the year.
