Approaching Retirement: How to Support Clients in Their Most Influential Planning Window
A Financial Professional Blog from Oceanview Life and Annuity Company
The 5–10 years before retirement represent one of the most pivotal financial planning windows your clients will ever experience. During this period, priorities shift, timelines tighten, and the margin for recovery from market disruption narrows. Clients begin asking different questions—ones rooted in security, clarity, and predictability.
Oceanview’s Life Event guide on Approaching Retirement highlights how this stage often requires a meaningful strategy shift from accumulation to protecting what clients have worked decades to build.
For financial professionals, this often presents an appropriate time to revisit plans, strengthen confidence, and reinforce long-term stability.
Why the Pre-Retirement Phase Is So Distinct
According to the Life Event resource, clients in this phase often experience:
- Reduced recovery time from market declines
- Sequence of returns risk, where early-retirement losses can significantly affect lifetime income
- A greater need for income clarity in the years ahead
- A shift toward simplifying their financial life
- Increased focus on tax-efficient positioning
These concerns reshape the planning conversation. Clients aren’t just thinking about growth—they’re thinking about preservation, income consistency, and protecting their timeline.
How Advisors Can Leverage This Life Event to Deepen Client Support
1. Start With the Questions Under the Surface
Clients may appear confident, but most are quietly asking:
- “What happens if the market drops right before I retire?”
- “Do I have enough funds for a comfortable retirement?”
- “How do I turn my savings into income I can rely on?”
Give clients permission to voice these concerns. The more they articulate, the better you can help address their priorities and planning considerations.
Conversation starters:
- “What would help you feel more confident about your retirement date?”
- “Has your view of risk changed as you get closer to retirement?”
2. Re-Evaluate Their Time Segments
The Life Event guide outlines a bucket-style time-horizon framework.
This framework is extremely effective for pre-retirees because it creates structure and simplifies complex decisions.
Short-term (1–3 years): liquidity for short-term needs and protection
Medium-term (4–10 years): moderate risk + protection features
Long-term (10+ years): growth-oriented assets
This approach helps clients visualize their time horizon for their savings —and how each bucket plays a role in supporting their goals.
This is one of several planning approaches and may not be appropriate for every client.
3. Balance Growth Potential with Principal Protection
This life stage is when clients may want to protect a portion of their assets while still participating in potential upside. Oceanview’s balanced approach—via MYGAs and FIAs—can support that objective through:
- Guaranteed interest for MYGAs
- Index-linked interest credits for FIAs, subject to caps/spreads/participation rates
- Principal protection – Guarantees against market losses of initial principal.
- Tax-deferred accumulation – These annuities allow for tax-deferred accumulation, which can assist in enhancing accumulation during peak earning years.
- Future income options – Flexibility to convert accumulated value into a guaranteed income stream during retirement.
These tools can reinforce stability when clients feel uncertain.
Questions to ask:
- “Would more predictable growth help you feel more secure as you approach retirement?”
- “How much of your portfolio do you want protected from market downturns?”
4. Help Clients Clarify Income Expectations
Income planning becomes central in the final working years. Clients want to understand:
- When each income stream will begin
- Whether those sources are predictable
- How much they can rely on each year
Use this time to model different scenarios, review hypothetical market scenarios, and illustrate how protected solutions may support long-term confidence.
5. Simplify Their Financial Landscape
As clients near retirement, financial complexity can become a source of stress.
The Life Event guide emphasizes that consolidating accounts can create clarity, reduce administrative burden, and help clients clearly see what they have available for retirement.
Advisors can support clients by reviewing old 401(k)s, legacy IRAs, and scattered accounts that may no longer align with their needs.
How MYGAs and FIAs Fit into the Pre-Retirement Conversation
Based on the Life Event guidance, these solutions may support clients who want:
- Stability during unpredictable markets
- Principal protection as they approach withdrawals
- Predictable growth or index-linked growth potential
- Tax-deferred accumulation
- Optional future income options that can add clarity to retirement planning
These characteristics align strongly with the emotional and financial pressures clients feel in the years before retirement.
Using the Life Event piece in Client Meetings
Here are three practical ways to incorporate the guide into your process:
✔ Pre-meeting education:
Send the piece in advance to spark questions about volatility, income needs, and protecting principal.
✔ Meeting framework:
Walk clients through the risks of sequence of returns and reduced recovery time using the illustrations in the guide.
✔ Post-meeting reinforcement:
Highlight the sections on prioritizing protection and simplifying finances to support your recommendations as part of a broader, client-specific planning discussion.
A Moment for Meaningful Guidance
The years just before retirement are a time of anticipation, but also uncertainty. Clients want reassurance—not through promises, but through clear strategy, thoughtful protection, and a retirement plan built to withstand life’s inevitable shifts.
By using the Approaching Retirement Life Event guide as an educational anchor, you can help clients make confident decisions that support stability in their final working years and well into retirement.
OCEANVIEW ANNUITIES ARE PRODUCTS OF THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY AND NOT GUARANTEED BY ANY BANK NOR INSURED BY THE FDIC OR NCUA/NCUSIF OR ANY OTHER FEDERAL GOVERNMENTAL AGENCY. MAY LOSE VALUE. NO BANK/CREDIT UNION GUARANTEE. NOT A DEPOSIT. MAY ONLY BE OFFERED BY A LICENSED INSURANCE AGENT. GUARANTEES ARE SUBJECT TO THE CLAIM PAYING ABILITY OF THE ISSUING INSURANCE COMPANY.
Annuities issued by Oceanview Life and Annuity Company, 1331 17th Street, Suite 1050, Denver, CO 80202. In California, doing business as Oceanview Life and Annuity Insurance Company www.oceanviewlife.com.
Annuities are generally designed as long-term retirement solutions and have certain limitations. They are generally not intended to replace emergency funds, serve as income for day-to-day expenses, or support short-term savings goals. Please review the contract for full details.
A.M. Best Rating as of December 11, 2024, is subject to change. A (Excellent) rating is third highest of fifteen possible rating classes for financial strength. The outlook assigned to these Credit Ratings is stable.
As each client and prospective client’s financial needs differ, care should be taken in making any recommendation to purchase an annuity. Therefore, nothing in this document should be read as investment advice.
Neither Oceanview Life and Annuity Company nor any of its representatives may provide tax or legal advice.
Withdrawals in excess of any Free Partial Withdrawal amounts are subject to a Surrender Charge and Market Value Adjustment (MVA). The MVA may have the effect of increasing or decreasing the Surrender Value of the withdrawal depending on the market interest rate changes.
The IRS may impose a penalty for withdrawals prior to age 59 ½.
Contracts purchased in an IRA or other tax-qualified plan provide no additional tax-deferral benefit, since they are already afforded tax-deferred status. All annuity features, risks, limitations, and costs should be considered prior to purchasing an annuity within a tax-qualified retirement plan. For non-qualified annuities, tax deferral is not available to corporations and certain other entities.
Issue age for all deferred annuities is the age of the last birthday of the Owner. If joint owners, age of oldest determines commission payout.
Rates, renewal caps, and declared interest rates, will always follow contract provisions relative to minimums and maximums stated. Oceanview determines, at its discretion, the rates, renewal caps and, declared interest rates above the contractual minimums that are guaranteed.
Funds allocated to an index do not directly participate or invest in the stock market or any index.