PLAN Sponsor Portal
The Preparing for Longevity Advisory Network (PLAN) draws insights on the future of the advice industry from financial professionals themselves.
This webpage, which is exclusively for use by sponsors of the PLAN research initiative, presents findings and materials that have risen from the AgeLab's research with the PLAN panel. Check back for future additions!
- Recruit advisors in your organization: PLAN is more powerful with more participants. Contact financial advisors at your company about joining PLAN.
- Peer-to-Peer Forum: Peer-to-Peer Forums are a quarterly opportunity exclusively for PLAN Corporate Members. We send out invites to P2P forums in our emails to sponsors.
- PLAN Webinars: Webinars are an opportunity for financial professionals and corporate members to connect with colleagues and industry leaders, share and learn best practices, and discuss timely topics. Please check your inboxes for announcements about upcoming PLAN webinars.
- 2025 PLAN Forum: Thank you for attending the 2025 AgeLab Member Forum! We look forward to convening again in the spring of 2026.
Past PLAN Materials
PLAN Insights Briefs
Q2 2025 Topic - PLAN Forum learnings
April 2025 - Insights from Elite Advisors
Q1 2025 Topic - "Phygital" client experiences
February 2025 - Getting Phygital
Q4 2024 Topic - Social portfolio
December 2024 - Survey of Advisors on Social Connection
October 2024 - Introduction to the "Social Portfolio," for Advisors
October 2024 - Introduction to the "Social Portfolio," for Clients
Q3 2024 Topic - Expanding conversations
September 2024 - How Social Work and Counseling Techniques Can Set Advice Apart
July 2024 - Retirement Test Drive
Q2 2024 Topic - Brain health and dementia
June 2024 - Survey of Advisors on Dementia Conversations
May 2024 - Gray Matters Webinar Summary
April 2024 - Cognitive Decline and Financial Wellne
Q1 2024 Topic - Meeting spaces
February 2024 - The Omnichannel Advisor An AgeLab survey of advisors finds a tension between the rising prevalence of virtual meetings between clients and advisors and how advisors themselves actually prefer to meet - that is, in-person.
January 2024 - Client Experience in the Physical Meeting Space An advisor's office can prime clients toward certain kinds of conversations over others, and influence the overall client experience. What do your reception area and meeting spaces convey to clients?
Q4 2023 Topic - Caregiving
December 2023 - Financial Considerations of Caregiving Family caregivers must navigate an intricate web of financial challenges. This brief lists some of the top expenses that caregivers may face as well as their associated burden, leveraging results from the MIT AgeLab's CareHive panel of family caregivers.
November 2023 - Sources of Support for Caregivers When the advisor can't answer all of the questions, where can caregivers turn to for support? Here's a list of professionals who may be able to step in.
October 2023 - Language of Caregiving Basic facts about the prevalence, implications, and complexity of family caregiving paired with results from research with the MIT AgeLab's CareHive panel of family caregivers.
Q3 2023 Topic - Technology
September 2023 - AI & Longevity AI has the potential to transform many industries. How willing are consumers to work with machines instead of humans in these new domains? Plus, a few of the terms terms in the new world of AI, broken down into simpler language.
August 2023 - Technologies for Retirement A wide range of technologies may improve quality of life as we age. But are clients accounting for technology as a line item in retirement?
July 2023 - Older Adults and Technology An overview of ideas - and misconceptions - about older adults and technology adoption.
Q2 2023 Topic - Housing
June 2023 - Senior Housing A taxonomy of different types of senior housing, as well as some cost and insurance implications.
May 2023 - Assessing Livability Tools that clients and advisors can use to determine whether a city or neighborhood is a good fit for life in retirement.
May 2023 - Seven Questions to Address your Where in Retirement An article by AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin that provides guidance on making relocation decisions in retirement.
April 2023 - Aging in Place Questions that advisors should be asking clients to ensure that they have a home that will accommodate their needs as they age.
PLAN Issue Briefs
Advising for Caregivers of Adult Children This issue brief explores the complexities of caregiving for an adult child and the ways in which advisors can better support clients in this caregiving role. The brief features observations and best practices both from financial advisors and caregivers of adult children.
Financial Exploitation This brief report highlights financial professionals' attitudes and experiences with the topic of financial fraud and exploitation. It also features a compilation of financial exploitation-related resources, practices, and insights shared by PLAN panelists.
Working with Clients Who Are Caregivers This brief examines the expertise and resources that advisors bring to bear for caregiving clients, as well as their levels of comfort with bringing up caregiving as a topic of conversation.
Permitted Conversations with Clients Who is the ideal financial advisor? Is he or she a money manager, a life coach, or a friend? What topics do clients want to discuss with their advisor? This brief compares advisor and client attitudes toward discussing subjects that may fall outside of the conventional advisor role.
Advisor Attitudes toward COVID-19 COVID-19 has upended lives and industries, but advisors report being optimistic about their long-term outlooks. This brief examines the impacts that advisors have experienced on their business in the wake of COVID-19, and the levels of worry that they feel about the influence of the pandemic on their long-term outlook.
Future Outlooks for the Advice Industry This brief discusses advisors' beliefs about how prepared they are for the future of their industry, as well as how their communications with clients have changed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
PLAN Webinars
Q4 2024: Investing in Your Clients' Social Portfolio
In retirement, attrition to one's social portfolio is natural. People move away, divorce reallocates friendships, old friends drift, and death forces us to confront the fact that connections in our social portfolio will end. But we can plan and make decisions to keep our social assets trending upward. During this PLAN webinar, AgeLab Director Joe Coughlin discusses how advisors can support clients in assessing whether they have saved and invested adequately in the social assets they will need in life after work.
Q3 2024: Retirement: Try It Before You Buy It
How can we know that our retirement plan will pass muster when the rubber hits the road? AgeLab Director Joe Coughlin suggests that we take our retirement plan for "a test drive," and in this PLAN webinar, he lays out how advisors can guide clients to try their retirement before they buy it. Daniel Gottlieb of Royal Bank of Canada appears as a guest speaker to discuss his own experiences with testing out his retirement plan.
Q2 2024: Gray Matters: How Advisors Can Help Before, During, and After a Dementia Diagnosis
Dementia has profound impacts on financial behaviors and significantly increases the risk of financial losses. Negative financial events can begin to occur up to seven years prior to a formal dementia diagnosis, meaning that an advisor may be the first person to recognize cognitive decline in a client. How can advisors initiate conversations about brain health and dementia in a productive and proactive way with their clients?
Q4 2023: Aging Clients and Financial Fraud
Advisors are uniquely positioned to identify and prevent financial fraud and exploitation, particularly for older clients. This PLAN webinar discussed how advisors can effectively intervene and protect their clients from fraud.
Q3 2023: "AI, Longevity, and the Future of Advice: From Consumer Anticipation to Industry Implementation
Maria Jose Saenz,Director of MIT Digital Supply Chain Transformation at the Center for Transportation and Logistics, was the guest speaker for this PLAN webinar that discussed where "AI technology" stands today, and the process by which it is increasingly being incorporated into industry.
Q2 2023: "Look Who’s Home: Impacts of Changing Household Demographics on Planning"
This MIT AgeLab PLAN webinar featured a presentation by AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin about nine existing and anticipated shifts in household composition and their implications for the future of advice. AgeLab researchers Adam Felts, Lauren Cerino, and Lexi Balmuth also shared relevant AgeLab research addressing the shifts. The webinar explored questions such as: How might variations in clients’ household composition impact conversations around topics like saving money, estate planning, and caregiving? How can advisors prepare themselves to better understand their clients’ unique needs and financial considerations?
Q1 2023: "Health, Wealth & Client Engagement In The Age Of Disruptive Demographics: Racial and Cultural Diversity"
Today, the average client tends to be white, older, and male, but that dynamic will shift along with demographic change. This MIT AgeLab PLAN webinar, the first in a series on advice in the age of disruptive demographics, provided an overview of some of these anticipated shifts, what they mean for the business of advice, and what innovative firms and advisors are doing today to meet tomorrow’s client expectations. The webinar featured a presentation by AgeLab researcher Adam Felts as well as guest speakers Dr. J. Nwando (Onyejekwe) Olayiwola, MD, MPH, FAAFP, Chief Health Equity Officer & SVP at Humana, Inc., and Veronica Coleman, Financial Advisor at Edward Jones.
November 2022: "Advising Family Caregivers of Adult Children"
Highlighting the voices of caregivers, financial professionals, and AgeLab researchers, this webinar explored the topic of caregiving for adult children, and how financial professionals can best support their clients who are currently or may one day be in this situation. The presentation featured qualitative findings from the PLAN and CareHive panels.
July 2022: "Ok, Boomer: Connecting with Clients Across the Generations"
Webinar Insights, Webinar Recording
AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin, researcher Julie Miller, and summer interns Jake Birnbach, Talia Chait, and Anjali Reddy led a conversation around the dynamics of cross-generational advising throughout the client lifecycle. The team presented analyses of recent quantitative and qualitative findings from the PLAN panel and shared best practices for engagement with clients across the generations.
June 2022: "Forging Family Conversations about Wealth, Care, and Longevity"
Webinar Insights, Webinar Recording
PLAN's June 2022 webinar featured appearances from Transamerica's Director of Thought Leadership Brian Forbes and Forrest Williams, Managing Partner at the Opus Group. They discussed the importance of expanding advisory conversations beyond wealth alone, as well as strategies that advisors can use to deepen relationships with clients.
May 2022: "Thriving or Surviving? Key Indicators of Financial Advisors’ Health and Wellbeing"
Webinar Insights, Webinar Recording
During the May 2022 PLAN webinar, MIT AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin and researcher Julie Miller led an important conversation about how advisors are faring these days, to whom they are turning for advice and support, and what the possible consequences are of advisors truly thriving versus just surviving.
April 2022: "Fraud, Scams, and Financial Exploitation: How Advisors Can Educate, Intervene, and Support Clients"
Webinar Insights, Webinar Recording
The April 2022 PLAN webinar featured a presentation by AgeLab researchers Sophia Ashebir, Taylor Patskanick, and Julie Miller on the unique susceptibility of older adults to fraud, barriers and challenges to starting conversations, and practical steps for advisors to support potentially vulnerable clients.
March 2022: "Forces Beyond Our Control: Advising in Times of Crisis"
Webinar Insights, Webinar Recording
During the March 2022 PLAN webinar, AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin and researcher Adam Felts discussed the role of the information environment in client psychology and decision-making – and how advisors can position themselves as ‘keepers of calm’ for clients when current events feel out of control.
February 2022: "Student Loan Repayment: What Every Advisor Needs To Know Beyond the Dollars and Cents"
Webinar Insights, Webinar Recording
MIT AgeLab researchers and guest expert, Justin Kribs, MS, CFP, led a conversation about how the advising industry can and must meet and predict the evolving needs of clients with student loans.
December 2021: "Giving Good Advice May Be About How You Wear It: How Clients Envision Their Ideal Physician & Financial Advisor"
Webinar Insights, Webinar Recording
PLAN's December 2021 webinar featured a discussion led by AgeLab director Joe Coughlin about how patients and clients expect their most trusted sources of advice to dress - and why it may matter more than ever.
November 2021: "What Clients Really Care About: Understanding the Family & Financial Dynamics of Caregiving and How Financial Professionals Can Become Trusted Resources"
Webinar Insights, Webinar Recording
AgeLab researchers presented on how advisors can develop expertise for and better help clients who are family caregivers.
October 2021: "How Clients Judge Good Advice: What We Can Learn From Client Conversations on Social Media"
Webinar Insights, Webinar Recording
For PLAN's October 2021 webinar, AgeLab director Joseph Coughlin discussed findings from social media that suggest the qualities of advisors that clients care about the most.
September 2021: "Can We Talk? What Clients Really Want to Talk About"
Webinar Insights, Webinar Recording
PLAN's September 2021 webinar featured conversations between advisors about how they engage in unfamiliar conversations with clients, and what topics clients are bringing to them. The following summary collects quotes from advisors on the PLAN panel that arose during the webinar discussion.
Recommended Reading
Evolving Client-Advisor Conversations and the Future of Advice - the Journal of Financial Planning
Navigating Client Relationships During COVID-19 - the Journal of Financial Planning
Are You Planning for Retirement? Why It Might Not Be Enough - Marketwatch
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