Your clients may have spent years building their savings. But once they retire, many of them don’t want to touch it.

Corebridge Financial surveyed more than 2,200 pre-retirees and retirees with at least $100,000 in investable assets. Only 28% said they were comfortable watching their savings decline in retirement, and 38% of retirees said they had spent less than they wanted so they could protect their nest egg.¹

That reluctance makes more sense once you look at everything the portfolio is being asked to do.

Why spending feels risky to your clients

For many retirees, this one pool of assets is expected to:

• Generate income for the rest of their lives
• Keep pace with inflation
• Cover healthcare costs
• Pay for long-term care, if it’s needed
• Support a surviving spouse
• Leave something to the kids or a cause they care about
• Provide cash for emergencies
• Hold up through market downturns

With every dollar spoken for, it’s no wonder clients hold back. In the same study, 56% said they fear outliving their savings more than dying with money left over.¹

Give some jobs to insurance

Insurance won’t handle everything on the list, but it can relieve portfolios of some specific risks. That way, the rest of the money has room to work.

Once retirees know the legacy is funded and a care event won’t drain their accounts, saying yes to the trip or the kitchen remodel feels more doable.

Decide which risks to keep

Not every risk needs to be insured. The real work is deciding, on purpose, which risks they’ll carry, which ones they’ll transfer, and which goals deserve their own funding. That moves the conversation from “How much have I saved?” to:

Start before retirement

Many insurance strategies are easier and less expensive to put in place during a client’s working years. Permanent life insurance bought at 50 can provide protection now and flexibility later. A client who waits until 68 may pay more or find that a health change has taken some options off the table.

So the best time for this conversation is before they retire, while clients still have the income, the time and the insurability to give different parts of their plan different jobs.