Caution urged around aged care balancing act
A staggering number of aged care decisions are made in hospital car parks, which means advisers need to rethink their approach to the time-critical area of advice, a planner believes.
Speaking at the Financial Planning Association's Congress in Adelaide last week, Western Pacific Financial Group aged care adviser, Drew Potts, said advisers needed to be able to react quickly to what is often an emotionally-charged matter of urgency.
"This is a process that we see repeated time and time again," he said.
"By the time we get to see someone, they are on their way into aged care. What taxed our business is that we had to drop everything to deal with this.
"If you play with it, you can blow it up and you can blow it up very badly, not just for the resident but also for the family, the estate, everything else like that."
The planner recommended that advisers who want to take on prospective aged care clients thoroughly investigate the area, including local aged care facilities and the catalogue of options and charges.
"Now it's even more critical because of the convoluted system we're working with with costs and fees," he said.