Alliance Adds Advisor Version of Retirement Readiness Assessment Tool

By Allison Bell

News May 28, 2019 at 03:00 PM

Share & Print

A meter in a distillery, modified by Allison Bell of ALM. (Photo: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg)

The Alliance for Lifetime Income is now offering financial advisors an advisor-oriented version of its Retirement Income Security Evaluation tool, or RISE Score tool.

The alliance — a group for annuity providers and other organizations with an interest in income planning arrangements — says the tool provides a quick, standardized assessment of how prepared users are for retirement.

The alliance hired Milliman, an actuarial consulting firm, to develop the tool.

The original, consumer version of the tool, which was unveiled in April, uses demographic information and information about a user's retirement savings, projected retirement expenses and expected sources of retirement income to provide a rough retirement readiness estimate.

The alliance says the advisor version includes extra features aimed at financial professionals, such as a feature that lets an advisor customize a client's portfolio asset allocations.

The alliance notes that the consumer enters all information anonymously, and that the system never asks a consumer for personally identifiable information.

Jean Statler, the executive director of the alliance, said in a statement that the advisor version of the tool "will help financial advisors have more meaningful conversations with their clients about managing risk in retirement, and the role that protected lifetime income through an annuity can play in helping clients avoid outliving their money."