According to the vast majority of the nation's leading branch managers (94%), meeting the retirement and estate planning needs of the baby boomer generation represents today's greatest growth opportunity for financial advisors. But are advisors ready for it?

As part of the inaugural On Wall Street Branch Manager of the Year Awards sponsored by Mainstay Investments, the finalists/honorees were asked about the boomer retirement issue. They largely talked about the sheer number of people that make up this market ("There are 10,000 people turning 60 every day in this country. That's a lot of people who need the help of a professional advisor.") Another common response regarded the wealth transfer that this will necessarily prompt ("Baby boomers are going to be passing down the largest amount of money in history.") One honoree drove home the point, though, on just how much opportunity there is in this market, and not always from the expected areas. It's not just that a large number of people are approaching retirement, he notes. But a lot of them do not know what their financial needs are. So the real opportunity is to identify their needs and help meet them. Embracing the boomer generation is an imperative—not an option—for success. But which retirement needs demand immediate attention?

Branch managers rank retirement savings and wealth accumulation as the most critical issue facing clients as a whole, with retirement distribution listed as the third most important. Even in third place, it is clear that distribution of retirement wealth is certainly top of mind these days. One manager noted that the boomers overall have done a pretty good job at wealth accumulation, but they still need help in distribution. They need genuine income planning, leading to systematic withdrawals, because many people do not have pensions, the manager said. Another said that a lot of people seem to be retiring, or about to retire, without giving much thought to what they are going to do when they don't go to work the next Monday.

An advisor should ask a lot of questions to figure outwhat their clients want to do with their time. There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed, like healthcare or how to get out of debt so they're not carrying that into retirement, one branch manager said. Rounding out that list of top challenges are other familiar retirement must-haves: wealth preservation, income diversification, generating income in retirement and estate planning. Managing healthcare costs makes it into the top 10 client concerns, as does caring for parents and college planning.

Great Expectations

Branch managers are not the only ones expecting great things from advisors during the boomers' golden years. Boomers themselves have high expectations of their advisors, namely their ability to deliver a proper retirement income management program.

The nation's leading branch managers unanimously agreed that, at a minimum, clients expect their advisors to offer beneficial rollover distribution options and income generation strategies as part of their retirement income management program. The branch managers also overwhelmingly agreed that retiring clients expect calculating minimum required distributions—offering tax minimization strategies—and advising on distributions of company stock, from a qualified plan, as prerequisites for any advisor offering a retirement income management program.

But in some cases, they have not done any preliminary work in this regard. "People retire and haven't done a budget in the last 20 years," one branch manager said. "We try to get them to write down their budgets for the two years prior and match it to what their income will be."

The industry needs to give clients regular reviews of beneficiaries working with accountants and attorneys to make sure trusts and wills are up-to-date. We help clients gauge the health of family relationships and manage their liabilities. Clients need to understand their distribution plan. And we need to help them understand the escalating cost of healthcare and other inflation risks. These are important aspects of distribution planning that are most often overlooked. Advisors also need to know how to legally include, when permissible, the entire family around a retirement plan. A lot of clients have kids on one end of the life spectrum and parents on the other end. Retirement planning should be a family partnership.

Now More Than Ever

Advisors shouldn't shy away from the opportunity to speak to their client about retirement—especially given today's environment. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, for the first time in two decades, retirement confidence among boomers has dropped to 18% from 27%.