Longer lives are changing what clients need from their financial advisors — don’t get left behind
For decades, financial planning revolved around a straightforward objective: helping clients accumulate enough wealth to retire with confidence. That objective hasn’t changed.
What has changed is everything that comes after it.
Longer lives, healthier aging and increasingly non-linear careers mean retirement is no longer a single destination. For many clients, it marks the beginning of a new chapter that may last 25 or even 30 years. During that time, they may continue working in different ways, care for aging parents, help adult children, relocate, navigate changing family dynamics or rethink how they want to spend their time, talents and wealth.
Those transitions have significant financial implications. Increasingly, they are reshaping what clients need and expect from their advisors.
I was reminded of this during a recent conversation with Darren Coleman and Tania Slade at Portage Cross Border Wealth Management, a firm specializing in advising affluent Canadian and U.S. families in Oakville, Ont. Coleman is the founder and chief executive officer. Slade is senior wealth planner.
What struck me wasn’t their technical expertise — although it is considerable. It was how intentionally they are redesigning their advisory process around the realities of longer lives.
Early in our conversation, Coleman made an observation many advisors will recognize. “We’re starting to lose relevance if we’re not talking about the things clients are actually worried about.”
That sentence captures one of the biggest opportunities facing our profession.
For years, advisors have become increasingly sophisticated at solving financial problems. We have better planning software, more advanced tax strategies and increasingly powerful investment tools.
At the same time however, many clients are asking questions that aren’t purely financial. Should I continue working, even though I no longer need the income? How do we prepare for the possibility that one of us becomes a caregiver?
When should we help our children financially? How much is enough — and when do we start enjoying what we’ve built? How do we pass on not only our wealth, but also the values that created it?
These aren’t questions that can be answered with a simple retirement projection. They require advisors to understand the life clients are trying to build before determining the financial strategies that will support it.
One example Coleman shared illustrates this shift. Drawing on the work of Dr. Joseph Coughlin, founder of the MIT AgeLab, he asks clients three deceptively simple questions.
- Who’s going to change your light bulbs?
- How are you going to get an ice cream?
- Who will you have lunch with?
The questions often make clients smile before they make them think.
Changing a light bulb is really a conversation about maintaining independence.
Getting an ice cream is about mobility and continuing to enjoy the everyday experiences that make life meaningful.
Having lunch is about relationships and social connection, which are among the strongest predictors of health and well-being as we age.
None of those questions appear in a traditional financial plan. Yet they often determine whether someone experiences later life with confidence or uncertainty
“Family fire drills”
Coleman and Slade are also introducing what they call “family fire drills.” Families spend years preparing financially for retirement, but few prepare for the operational realities that often accompany longer lives.
If a parent experiences a health crisis tomorrow, who has the power of attorney? Who knows where important documents are stored? Which sibling coordinates care? Who can step away from work? How will decisions be made if family members live in different cities or different countries?
These conversations are not traditionally part of financial planning. Increasingly, they should be.
Slade has spent much of her career in financial planning, behavioural finance and advisor education. What attracted her to Portage was the opportunity to move beyond identifying these issues and begin building practical tools that help advisors guide clients through them.
Their goal isn’t to replace financial planning. It’s to broaden the conversations that inform it. That distinction matters.
The future advisor won’t be a therapist, health-care professional or retirement coach. But they will be a better integrator.
They understand that financial decisions are increasingly connected to health, family, work, housing and purpose. They know when to ask better questions, when to facilitate important family conversations and when to connect clients with other professionals who can help.
Ironically, advances in AI make these human capabilities even more valuable. AI will continue to improve portfolio construction, retirement projections and tax modelling. Those developments should be embraced.
What AI cannot do is recognize that one spouse is excited about retirement while the other is quietly anxious. It cannot detect that a client asking whether they can retire is really asking who they will become once work is no longer central to their identity. It cannot facilitate a conversation between parents and adult children about caregiving responsibilities or legacy.
Those conversations require judgment. They require empathy. Most importantly, they require trust.
Another insight from my conversation with Coleman and Slade reflects a broader demographic trend. Increasingly, affluent clients are not struggling with a scarcity problem. They’re struggling with an abundance problem.
After decades of disciplined saving, they have accumulated more wealth than they ever expected. Their challenge is no longer simply preserving assets. It’s deciding how to use those assets intentionally — whether that’s travelling while they’re healthy, helping children earlier in life, supporting charitable causes or creating shared family experiences.
Helping clients accumulate wealth remains fundamental to the advisor role. Helping them use that wealth to live the life they envision may become just as important. This evolution should not be viewed as a departure from financial planning. It is a natural progression.
As longevity reshapes the lives of our clients, financial planning is becoming less about preparing for a single event called retirement and more about helping clients navigate a series of important life transitions over several decades.
The advisors who thrive in this environment will continue to deliver technical excellence. That remains the foundation of trust. But they’ll also ask different questions. They’ll recognize patterns earlier. They’ll help families prepare before crises emerge. They’ll build networks of expertise that extend beyond investments and taxation.
Most importantly, they’ll remain relevant. Because in a world of longer lives, the greatest value an advisor can provide is no longer simply helping clients retire. It’s helping them navigate everything that comes next.
This article was written By Simon Chan and published on Advisor.ca on July 30, 2026
