Bento Engine Webinar Recap | Moments That Matter: Mastering Healthcare Planning During Life's Key Milestones

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Caribou’s CEO, Christine Simone, was recently a guest on a Bento Engine webinar, hosted by their CEO, Philipp Hecker. During the webinar, Christine talked about:

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1. Client expectations when it comes to guidance on healthcare decisions.

2. The common Life Events you can use to engage with clients and discuss healthcare coverage and costs.

3. Ways to effectively communicate with clients about key Life Events.

4. How advisors can support clients in healthcare-related decisions (e.g., Whether or not to choose a plan with an HSA, how to choose between Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage.)

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Philipp also showed attendees how to use Bento Engine’s Life Events programs and how easily Bento Engine integrates with various CRM. 

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If you’re short on time or prefer reading over watching, an overview of some of the key points from the conversation can be found below. However, if you want to hear the great questions that webinar attendees asked during the live session, we highly recommend watching the webinar below.

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Philipp: “In the U.S., Uncle Sam gives us 15 age milestones that matter in the lives of your clients and prospects. These are regulatory birth dates that trigger distinct wealth management risks or opportunities by law. Ten of them on the right pertain loosely to retirement. Five of them on the left pertain to the coming of age of the next generation of the client family that you want to serve.”

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Philipp: “And as Christine alluded to, many of these moments have meaningful healthcare implications, which is something we'll dive into throughout this discussion. That's the good news. The bad news is that even advised clients are not always being advised. Here's what I mean — we surveyed older, wealthy Americans that aren't in an active relationship with a human advisor. And as you can see here in blue, shockingly often they don't receive the right advice on the right topics at the right point in time. That to us is a big gap, a big need that we are reframing into an opportunity, an opportunity to play defense and offense.”

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Philipp: “One last comment before I hand it over to Christine. I brought to life the 15 age-based milestones. The life events program I mentioned, as the name implies, focuses on life events such as getting married, divorced, having a child, buying a business, or selling a home. Easily two dozen life events that not always, but often, happen in the life of your clients. And when they do, you want to be there with proactive advice and capture money in motion. In blue check marks, I highlighted the ones that for sure have meaningful healthcare implications, and that is a bridge to you, Christine, Bento surfaces opportunities to engage and serve the clients on a variety of topics. Oftentimes healthcare is a key consideration set during these life events that you [Christine] and your wonderful team and solution for sure can help with.”

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Christine: “Thank you for that smooth introduction. Keep this slide up for a second because it segues so nicely into what I'm about to jump to: these life events are opportunities to add value to your client relationships. This is the chance for you to go a step further with them and not just with education, but also with supporting decision-making. So let's say there is a client who has a kid who is 26 and aging off their parents' policy like you can see here on the top of this slide.”

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Christine: “How are you really going to connect with that client in the next generation? You want to support them in actually helping them pick a health plan. Make sure that they're enrolled, and get them across the finish line. It's not just about communication, whether it's visual, written, or in an email format, that's the first step. Step two is actually supporting the decision-making, and that's where Caribou comes in.”

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“Healthcare can seem like such a small bit of your client's financial plans, but I would argue that it's actually one of the highest areas in which you can provide value because healthcare actually starts to become one of the top expenses in retirement. So if you only start to plan for healthcare once the client's in retirement, it's probably a little bit too late. Healthcare is on your client's minds very, very early. 80% of future retirees state that healthcare costs are one of their top financial fears in retirement.”

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Christine: “Where there's, unfortunately, a little bit of misalignment is that only 17% of financial professionals feel confident in discussing healthcare with their clients. And I always empathize and understand why that is. It's not why you got into the profession. There's certainly a really steep learning curve to the ins and outs of everything related to healthcare, whether it's federal law or state specific. And you don't necessarily wanna be in the business of asking your clients about their medications or their doctors, and it can kind of put you in a little bit of an awkward position. But, that’s where Caribou steps in.”

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Christine then showed a brief demo of Caribou’s healthcare planning software, HealthPlanner, which you can watch beginning at 22:08

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Philipp: “There is a lot of value to create for our clients and our practices if and when we focus on topics such as healthcare that have a meaningful impact on the clients we serve. Bento Engine is very complimentary, as Christine suggested, in the sense that via its technology, via its integration into the CRM, surfaces advice opportunities that run the gamut of fixed age points and more dynamic life events. Many of which have meaningful healthcare implications, which is how, as Christine showed us, Caribou can really take implementation to the next level for everyone's benefit.”

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