Ageing workforce an issue for advice

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New Zealand’s financial advice industry is being warned it will need to come to grips with questions about ageing.

Wednesday, June 15th 2016, 6:00AM 1 Comment

by Susan Edmunds

The Commission for Financial Capability is holding a forum later this month to discuss the challenges and opportunities of New Zealand’s ageing workforce.

It will look at the implications of people working after 65 and understand what is driving them to do so.

New Zealand’s employment rate for people aged 65 to 69 has doubled since 2003.

CFFC group manager for investor education David Boyle said the independent adviser market was not getting any younger and, at the same time, were also dealing with clients who were getting older and facing decisions about working after 65.

He said the industry would need to hope that there would be a transformation after the review of the Financial Advisers Act that would encourage more people to look at advice as a career.

“With an ageing workforce advisers will be quite pivotal as people getting older need more support as they get to the next stage of retirement, to do something constructively with the lump sums they’ve accumulated. We need to make sure there are enough advisers around to help -  I really worry about that.”

Advisers would also face increasing concerns about who they could sell their businesses to when they retired unless more young people were brought in.

It comes as a study by PwC rates New Zealand as one of the best-performing OECD countries when it comes to harnessing the economic power of workers aged 55 and over. It looked at their employment, earnings and training.

New Zealand ranked second behind Iceland.

Consulting partner Scott Mitchell said: “Kiwis don’t have a fixed retirement age so older workers can retire when they want to and on average, those that do ‘retire’, continue to work shorter hours per week.

“There is no age limit to access student loans in New Zealand which makes retraining a viable option for older workers who wish to pursue work in other fields.”

But the report said there was still more that could be done and recommended businesses and policymakers encourage later retirement, focus on promoting lifelong education and training to upskill older workers and reduce employment barriers for older workers, tightening regulation around labour market discrimination.

Tags: Commission for Financial Capability David Boyle

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