Offering health support services for clients

More advisors are experiencing first-hand how a sudden illness or long-term health problems can ruin a client’s best-laid financial plans. BMO Financial Group is the latest to address this issue by introducing a third-party health care consultation service for clients of its advisors.

One of the major challenges the advisor community faces is the looming health care needs of both aging clients and their parents — the latter being the more immediate need, as the majority of the parents of boomers are entering their eighties and nineties. In many circumstances, care for aging parents falls squarely on the shoulders of the children.

“The issue of caregiving is highly emotional, but it also has financial ramifications and consequences. About a third of the boomers today assist parents in some way. Another third of Canadians expect to be taking care of their parents in the near future,” says Kris Vikmanis, head of the retirement market for BMO Financial Group.

According to an online BMO/Ipsos Reid survey of almost 2,200 Canadians, 66% of boomers who are currently assisting aging relatives say it has had some negative impact on their lives. Among the major issues, 31% say they have less time for themselves, one-fifth (20%) have had to take time off work, and 19% say they have been affected financially.

Hoping to ease this burden for both its advisors and clients, BMO has announced it has partnered with BEST in CARE, an impartial advisory service offering extensive eldercare information and caregiver support.

BEST in CARE provides a comprehensive online database of eldercare and caregiver services in Canada as well as unlimited phone and e-mail third-party health consultations with industry experts.

Vikmanis says advisors are encountering health issues with clients on a regular basis. While BMO’s advisors can handle the financial aspects of planning for clients’ eldercare needs, they are not equipped to handle eldercare support issues outside of financial planning. They need to turn to experts in that field.

“We’re not medical experts. That’s why we’ve partnered with medical experts for BEST in CARE and enCircle (high-net-worth support service),” she says. “Our advisors are not going to become health care experts — that’s not what their job is. Their value is in identifying need and being able to bring in the health and support services at the time of need or, even better, planning before a time of need.”

BEST in CARE will be available to all clients whose financial advisors have chosen to participate in the program. The idea itself is not entirely new. High-net-worth firms and family offices already offer health care support services.

Tom McCullough, president and CEO of Northwood Stephens Private Counsel, a high-net-worth family office, says his office provides a client coordinator who will help clients access a host of non-financial, including medical, services they may need.

“We have a relationship with a medical case management specialist, who has an MD and an MBA. We use him in tricky situations where you can’t get clear answers on your health or you’re getting stuck with the medical system where you can’t get drug [coverage] in the province,” McCullough says. “He charges hourly, like a lawyer, and he’s got contacts all over the U.S. and Canada in places like the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins and Harvard. He’s got 406 specialist contacts around the world.”

McCullough says having business relationships with competent nurses and other health care specialists whom advisors can contact on behalf of clients is another value-added service, particularly for clients worried about the health care needs of loved ones.

“We’ve got access to some people who do traditional sort of homecare. We have access to nurses. They are helpful, especially if a client’s parents are in another city. Clients like to know there is somebody who can look after things,” he says.

Richardson Partners Financial Limited has also recently established Family Care, a family wealth planning service for its high-net-worth clients.

In addition to providing services such as specialized estate planning advice and philanthropy, it addresses client health care needs.

“We also look at the future care needs of clients, which consists of who, what, when, where and why,” says Donald Bell, a lawyer and wealth planning consultant at RPFL. “We ask, who is going to provide the care? Is it going to be the kids, or is it going to be professionals? Are you going to stay in your home, and, if you do, will you use part-time care, or is it going to consist of 24-hour nursing care, or will you need a long-term facility?”

Bell says if they are able, the elderly parents tend to control their own health care planning, rather than defer to their kids. RPFL usually talks to the parents themselves about their goals and looks at the finances of the client to form a blueprint of what’s feasible for the parents’ health care needs.

“Sometimes there’s no reason why they need to go into an assisted-living home,” Bell says. “We had one client who made the determination they would stay in their home as long as possible and would even go to the extent of renovating so they could have live-in nursing care.”

Richardson tries to ensure clients who do require long-term facility care have their needs met and retain their dignity. One service his firm offers is creating a life history with the elderly client, which is used to educate health care professionals about the person if mental incapacity becomes an issue.

The history will usually be posted at the client’s bedside and will include personal details about his or her life and accomplishments, as well as medical history and needs.

“What this does is give the nurses or health care professionals who are caring for them an idea who this person is. It’s not just somebody in a vegetative state. This is a person who loved their family, or they might have been a world-class high-jumper — whoever they happen to be. If the life history is there, people really get an idea of who that person is.”

Filed by Mark Noble, Advisor.ca, mark.noble@advisor.rogers.com

(11/23/07)

Mark Noble