HelloLife, a new retirement program from Great-West Life, London Life and Canada Life, enables clients and advisors to work collaboratively to create a spending plan that lasts throughout their retirement
London, ON (Sept. 15, 2015) – Great-West Life, London Life and Canada Life are introducing HelloLife™, a holistic retirement income program to support advisors in helping their clients step into retirement with confidence.
To fully understand what Canadians were looking for from a retirement income program, the company conducted extensive consumer research over the past two years with people who were up to five years away from retirement, as well as those who had recently retired. This helped shape the development of the HelloLife program.
“We found Canadians are looking for guidance in making the transition into retirement,” said Rob Ritchie, Executive Vice-President of Wealth Management for Great-West Life, London Life and Canada Life. “Specifically, they’re looking for help on how to turn their retirement savings into a steady income stream that lasts throughout their lifetime. HelloLife will enable advisors to even better assist their clients in gaining confidence in their retirement income plans.”
Additional research conducted by Vision Critical (July 2015), commissioned by Great-West Life, London Life and Canada Life found that nearly half (46 per cent) of Canadians do not have a spending plan for retirement. It also indicated Canadians want to more actively engage with their advisor as a part of detailed retirement income planning. With those insights in mind, the HelloLife program includes an online planner, which enables collaborative conversations between advisor and client to jointly develop a plan that makes the most out of their money in retirement.
“Clients have worked hard, and the advice of their advisors has helped them get to this point,” says Nick Pszeniczny, Executive Vice-President of Individual Distribution and Marketing for Great-West Life, London Life and Canada Life. “The HelloLife program was designed to help advisors provide added value as their clients move into this new phase of their life. We’re excited about the opportunity this presents for our advisors and clients alike.”
Here’s how HelloLife works:
- For clients, the program provides a clear picture of existing retirement savings and an outlook for spending throughout retirement. It takes into account their basic needs, lifestyle spending and other factors.
- It brings together a dynamic combination to provide clients with regular, guaranteed income for life (through income annuities) and growth and flexibility (from segregated funds).
- The guaranteed and growth portions of the program can be scaled up or down, depending on the client’s needs and appetite for risk.
- The program also introduces four new income annuity options that have not previously been available in Canada. These options are designed to provide greater flexibility through an extended death benefit, income transition period, short-term rate protection and flexible income start date.
- In order to help Canadians feel confident in what they’re purchasing, the program focuses on plain language, and tools that advisors can use alongside their client, thereby promoting transparency.
- Those who do not already have an advisor can visit HelloLifeRetirement.com to request an advisor contact them.
- For advisors, the HelloLife program offers a unique online planner to help develop customized retirement income programs for their clients.
- This new HelloLife retirement income planner incorporates a needs analysis tool, live annuity quoting engine, a portfolio allocator and a program illustrator. This new online planner helps advisors better understand clients’ needs and supports them in creating recommendations that take into account individual financial and retirement goals.
About the survey
From July 8 – July 10, 2015 an online survey was conducted by Vision Critical – a leading online research company – among 1,518 randomly selected Canadian adults aged 60+ who are Angus Reid Forum panelists. The margin of error – which measures sampling variability – is +/- 2.5%, 19 times out of 20. The results have been statistically weighted according to age, gender and region. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding.
About Great-West Life, London Life, and Canada Life
Great-West Life, London Life, and Canada Life offer a broad portfolio of financial and benefit plan solutions, and serve the financial security needs of more than 12 million people across Canada. Together, Great-West Life, London Life, and Canada Life remain leading providers of individual retirement solutions.
Source: Great-West Life
