When Andy Powell, Strategic Partnerships Lead for Annuities at Standard Life, met with Professional Paraplanner to discuss today’s retirement landscape, one theme stood out: retirement is no longer a fixed point. For paraplanners, understanding the emotional and behavioural realities facing clients is key to good outcomes.
Retirement today looks very different from the traditional experience many clients still imagine. Andy said, “When I started out, everyone had a normal retirement date.
But now nothing’s textbook anymore. Some reduce their hours, some want semi‑retirement, and some keep working far beyond state pension age because it gives them purpose.”
This shift has meaningful implications for paraplanners. Income needs, longevity assumptions and spending patterns no longer follow a single predictable path.
Someone phasing out of work may require a softer income glidepath, while a client stepping away immediately may experience a period of higher early costs. Increasingly, the shape of retirement is dictated not by age but by lifestyle preference.
Purpose matters as much as the money
Andy reflected on how important purpose is in later life, both personally and professionally.
“If you said to me, right, you don’t need to work and you’ve got nothing you need to do — I’d go crazy. I have to be busy.”
He described meeting many clients who leave high‑pressure careers only to take on meaningful but far less stressful roles – working in local shops, delivering shopping or acting as caretakers. “It gives them a reason to get up. It keeps them moving.”
For paraplanners, this highlights the importance of exploring lifestyle expectations, not just financial ones.
Clients planning community roles or part‑time work may have different cost profiles and wellbeing needs than those preparing for extensive travel or a long‑awaited rest. Retirement is not withdrawal – for many, it is reinvention.
Retirement spending isn’t linear
Shifting spending patterns are another area where emotional and practical realities conflict with traditional modelling. Andy explained: “The greatest need for income is arguably those first five to ten years.” Clients often embrace long‑delayed hobbies, travel or home projects.
As health or energy levels naturally change, spending may fall, before rising again if care costs emerge later in life.
Linear modelling rarely reflects this. Paraplanners who build plans around natural retirement phases – active years, steady years, possible care years – create projections that feel far more believable to clients. This also helps clients understand why flexibility, rather than a single rigid income strategy, often produces better long-term outcomes.
Behavioural shifts in risk perception
Risk tolerance is another area shaped more by psychology than by market behaviour. Andy notes, “The risk‑taking identity drops off sharply. Preference for certainty becomes far more important.”
A client who once embraced high‑risk holdings may become deeply uncomfortable with volatility as retirement approaches.
That discomfort doesn’t always appear in risk questionnaires, but paraplanners often notice it when reviewing cashflow projections, running sensitivity tests or discussing sequencing risk.
Recognising this shift is vital. It influences decisions around annuitisation, guaranteed income features, drawdown investment strategies and the need for income stability during the early years of retirement.
Plans that feel misaligned with a client’s emotional comfort risk becoming unsustainable during stressed conditions.
Why these emotional factors transform advice
Paraplanners are increasingly central to how firms deliver suitability. Their ability to interpret client behaviours and anticipate emotional reactions helps ensure that technical recommendations align with lived experience.
Considering psychological and lifestyle factors enables paraplanners to:
- shape cashflows that reflect actual behavioural patterns
- select income solutions that meet emotional comfort levels
- prepare advisers for deeper conversations around identity, purpose and expectations
- create robust plans that adapt as retirement unfolds
Without this, a plan may be technically robust but practically fragile, making it misaligned with how a client thinks, feels and behaves when real life unfolds.
The opportunity for deeper paraplanner engagement
Andy summarises the point succinctly: “Money is important, but it’s financial security that matters. And that doesn’t always mean needing a huge retirement income. It’s about priorities. It’s about what the client wants to achieve.”
By giving space to purpose, identity, wellbeing and risk comfort, paraplanners elevate the retirement planning process. They help ensure recommendations resonate not only with a client’s financial details but with their vision of a fulfilling next chapter.
Retirement isn’t an end point within a financial planning process. It is, increasingly, a shifting landscape shaped by life choices, not just life expectancy.
Paraplanners are uniquely positioned to help clients navigate both the numerical and emotional terrain, and often, to guide advisers in doing the same.
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