CHALLENGER
People today live longer, healthier lives than any previous generation. This, however, presents retirees with the challenge of building up enough savings to last them through all their retirement years or managing their savings efficiently so they last as long as they do. This risk of outliving your retirement savings is called longevity risk.
To help retirees deal with this challenge, wealth management groups have been developing specially designed products, like annuities, guaranteed pensions and allocated pensions. These products are purpose-built to ensure they will not only pay their account holders regular income while they are retired, but also guarantee at least some of this income and minimise the risk it will run out.
Money magazine has for the first time partnered with Plan For Life, actuaries & researchers, to find out which are Australia’s best longevity cover providers. In their research, they investigated which longevity products were the most flexible, easy to understand with the best explanations, reliable, highest performing yet with the lowest fees, and providing the best support to financial advisers.
The 2022 Money magazine Consumer Finance Awards winner of the best longevity product provider is Challenger for its Liquid Lifetime Annuity. “It scored highly based on product flexibility for providing account holders with easy access to their funds at scheduled times, providing the best capital guarantee, income guarantee and longevity solution that ensures it will last as long as possible,” says Plan For Life.
Challenger also had the best level of support for financial advisers, provided the best explanations of how the product worked and the best support tools for retirees who invested into it.
Finalists in this category are AIA and QSuper, now part of the Australian Retirement Trust.
AIA is a finalist for its Lifetime Annuity, which also scored well on product flexibility, income, capital and longevity guarantee, adviser support and explanations for investors.
QSuper is a finalist for its Lifetime Pension. While it does not guarantee capital, it guarantees income, and is highly flexible, with easy-to-implement investment adjustments and investor explanations.
Plan For Life says QSuper’s online experience is a stand-out. It won the award for innovation in online tools and calculators, in particular for its income
estimator and retirement calculator.
‘ The risk of outliving your retirement savings is called longevity risk.