Our People Can Keep Retirement Savers on Course: Dylan Huang

At New York Life, we recognize that our impact extends beyond the scope of our business operations and supporting our most immediate constituents.

We have been putting our financial and other corporate resources behind organizations and initiatives aimed at creating opportunities and promising futures for people from all walks of life, as well as addressing the economic and societal inequalities that have become increasingly apparent.

What do you think the market will look like five years from now?

Consumer expectations around how they interact with financial partners have been evolving for some time, but the pandemic certainly accelerated the preference for digital solutions, even among generations that had been historically less likely to embrace technology.

In five years, I expect that consumers will have access to a true hybrid model for financial guidance that includes digital tools for simple transactions and human guidance for more complex situations when a conversation with a human being is critical.

How do you see New York Life's relationship with fee-based planners now?

Among New York Life's financial professionals, we have a growing population of advisors who are actively engaging in fee-based planning.

Those who engage in this type of planning typically develop larger and deeper relationships with their clients and they are meeting a variety of financial needs across life insurance, annuities, long-term care insurance and investment solutions.

What, if anything, should readers be doing to bring about positive change?

Financial professionals have an important role to play in helping consumers understand the value of protection in the context of a holistic financial strategy.

For many advisors, especially when it comes to retirement planning, protection equates to an asset allocation strategy whereby clients are heavily invested in equities in their accumulation years and shift to greater investment in bonds over time as they get closer to their decumulation years.

Although that strategy has generally worked in periods of low inflation, the current economic environment has exposed the downsides to that approach.

When consumers think of protection in the context of a financial strategy, they are thinking about insurance — to not only protect an account balance but to protect their families, their income, what matters most — either in the form of life insurance, long-term care, disability income or annuities.

Annuities certainly have been well-documented as having an important role to play in a retirement strategy.

But advisors may not know that life insurance also has an important role to play.

In addition to offering a valuable death benefit, certain policies can also function as an asset class all their own by providing cash value that can be tapped in adverse market conditions, protecting a retirement portfolio from a sequence of returns risk in the early retirement years.

Ultimately, a strategy that balances insured and traditional asset classes is often most beneficial for clients.

Advisors have a unique opportunity to broaden their knowledge of the critical role that protection solutions play in securing a family's financial future for generations to come.

Equally important is an understanding of the behavioral science component. Talking about financial planning is often emotionally charged and clients can sometimes make financial decisions that are not intuitive, so it's vital for advisors — and others making decisions that impact clients — to deeply understand their needs to deliver on the social good that insured solutions provide.

Dylan Huang. (Photo: New York Life)