Old Money; Why targeting clients in their dotage isn't a short-term business plan for the advisor.(Financial Planning)

Byline: Howard J Stock

Whether you start to cover a territory with a large retirement community or you simply want to keep the clients you have as they age, you'll have to learn how to meet the needs of older people.

This can be a challenge: You may have to handle issues beyond your financial expertise. Clients in later retirement may be lonely, suffer from undiagnosed illnesses that impair their mental capacities and may be house-bound. And with the elderly, making sure income lasts a lifetime is a more pressing concern. But by networking with the right contacts and involving clients' heirs in the plan, advisors can build a lucrative and self-feeding business.

Jo Crumpacker, an Invest rep at Boone County National Bank in Columbia, Mo., says older people's needs typically include long-term care, income management and estate planning. While everyone has such needs, for the elderly it's often different. For example, when you're 75 or older and you don't have long-term-care insurance, it's prohibitive to obtain-if you can even qualify. "Paying $30,000 per year in premiums is just too much for most people," says Drew Henrickson, a Primevest rep at Columbia State Bank in Tacoma, Wash. "Even if you can make the numbers work on paper, life …