Advisors have a chance to lead on longevity

Around the world, institutions have begun elevating longevity to a strategic priority. No longer a background demographic trend, the subject is shaping research agendas, innovation pipelines and leadership structures.

In financial services, longevity is now positioned as a driver of competitive advantage, influencing products, risk models, client experience and the very nature of financial advice.

For advisors, these moves aren’t just interesting headlines. They are signals that client expectations, planning assumptions and value propositions will change dramatically over the next decade. The question is whether advisors adapt early or continue applying 20th-century models to 21st-century lifespans.

The traditional retirement model was built for a world in which living to 70 was a good outcome. Today, clients may live into their 90s or beyond, navigating multiple transitions in work, health, caregiving, relationships and identity.

Leading firms are responding. Three recent examples illustrate the scale and direction of change internationally:

• Manulife launched a Global Longevity Institute to advance research and innovation around longer, healthier lives.
• Fidelidade, Portugal’s largest insurer, created a head of longevity role to embed longevity thinking directly into corporate strategy.
• UniCredit, one of Europe’s major banking groups, hosted a Longevity Economic Forum featuring Nobel laureates Michael Spence and Robert Merton to examine the economic and investment implications of longer lives.

Manulife: Combining health span and wealth span

In November 2025, Manulife announced a $350-million global commitment to establish the Global Longevity Institute, a platform built to advance research, spark innovation and accelerate progress on helping people live longer, healthier, more financially secure lives.

This is not a product initiative. It is a strategic repositioning that recognizes longevity as a driver of financial behaviour, resilience and planning.

Its mission is to advance global research with partners such as the Milken Institute and MIT AgeLab; host longevity symposiums across North America and Asia; and translate insights into tools, education and solutions for advisors, plan sponsors and customers.

The message for advisors: expect more resources and more data on how people live longer lives, and more focus on health, purpose, connection and transitions as planning variables.

Fidelidade: Putting longevity on the org chart

Portugal’s largest insurer has created one of the world’s first head of longevity roles — a senior mandate to infuse longevity across product design, marketing, customer experience and human resources strategy.

The work includes segmenting “elders of today” and “elders of tomorrow,” and understanding their needs; designing solutions that support long-term living, care and independence; and rethinking human resources to support an aging workforce.

When organizations create new executive roles, they’re not experimenting — they’re committing. Longevity is now a strategic lens, not a marketing theme. For Canadian advisors, this is a preview of what happens when longevity becomes a design principle rather than a marketing theme.

UniCredit: Elevating longevity

In May 2025, UniCredit, one of Europe’s largest banking groups, hosted the Longevity Economic Forum in Milan’s stock exchange building, bringing together world-class thinkers to examine how longer lives impact:

• labour market participation;
• pension solvency and system design;
• health and long-term care spending; and
• capital flows and investment horizons.

Longevity is no longer a niche topic. It’s a macroeconomic force that will shape the environment in which advisors build portfolios and plan for income.

In Canada, pension leaders, including those at OMERS, are beginning to explore how longevity should shape plan member experience. Research institutions like the National Institute on Ageing continue to raise the signal.

But compared with momentum in Europe and Asia, Canada’s progress remains early-stage. Too often, aging is viewed as an actuarial assumption rather than a strategic opportunity to innovate client experience, product design and workforce strategy.

This is where advisors can lead. You see longer lives play out in real time. By bringing longevity literacy into everyday planning, advisors can help move the industry from awareness to action and position their practice ahead of the curve.

What this means for advisors

Here are five practical ways to bring longevity into your client conversations and planning models.

1. Extend your planning horizon. Plan as if clients may live to 95 or 100, unless there is a compelling reason not to. Test portfolios and income strategies against multi-stage work patterns and caregiving periods.

2. Redefine retirement conversations. Shift from “When do you want to retire?” to “How do you want to structure the next 20–30 years of contribution, purpose and rest?”

3. Bring health span into wealth conversations. You’re not a health professional, but you can acknowledge that mobility, prevention, social connection and purpose influence financial outcomes. Build scenarios that reflect different health and lifestyle trajectories.

4. Create structured midlife touchpoints. Introduce midlife reviews for clients in their 40s, 50s and early 60s to discuss career transitions, housing choices, caregiving and future flexibility.

5. Position yourself as a longevity guide. Clients will need someone who can connect big trends to personal decisions. Advisors who do this early will earn deeper trust and longer relationships.

The actions taken by Manulife, Fidelidade and UniCredit are early signs of a much larger shift. Longevity is becoming a strategic pillar in financial services.

For clients, longer lives bring both excitement and complexity. For advisors, they offer an opportunity.

Advisors who incorporate longevity literacy into their practice today will be better equipped to help clients design financial plans that align with a 90- or 100-year life expectancy with confidence, clarity and purpose. Longevity isn’t just about adding years to life. It’s about helping clients design vibrant futures they’re excited to live.