Leveraging Retirement Management Advisor® (RMA®) Certification in the Age of Longevity

Key Takeaways

• A 65-year-old retiring today may spend an average of $172,500 on healthcare throughout retirement—Retirement Management Advisor^® (RMA^®) training builds the skills to incorporate realistic projections into client plans.

• The RMA^® certification covers inflation-protected income strategies, Social Security timing, behavioral finance, and the construction of written retirement policy statements.

• Nearly 95% of older adults have at least one chronic condition—advisors must plan for healthcare costs that most clients underestimate or ignore entirely.

Retirees today are living well into their 80s and 90s—and for higher-income households, life expectancy beyond 90 is no longer unusual. That shift has made retirement income planning exponentially more complex. A client retiring at 65 may need their assets to last 30 years or more, through multiple market cycles, rising healthcare costs, and inflation that erodes fixed income streams year by year.

Most retirement plans built a decade ago weren’t designed for that kind of duration. The advisors who serve today’s retirees need a different skill set: one grounded in longevity risk management, distribution sequencing, and the behavioral challenges that come with transitioning from accumulation to decumulation.

The Retirement Management Advisor^® (RMA^®) certification, offered by the Investments & Wealth Institute, is built specifically for that challenge. Here’s how it prepares advisors to address the most common and consequential risks their retired clients face.

How Do Advisors Manage Longevity Risk in Retirement Plans?

Longevity risk—the possibility that a client will outlive their savings — is the central challenge of modern retirement planning. Unlike market risk or inflation, it’s open-ended. An advisor can stress-test a portfolio for a 10% market decline, but planning for an unknowable lifespan requires a different approach.

RMA^® training teaches advisors to plan for longevity across three dimensions:

• Duration assumptions: building plans around extended life expectancies rather than actuarial averages, so clients aren’t underplanned if they live into their 90s.
• Income sustainability: structuring withdrawal strategies that account for sequence-of-returns risk and maintain purchasing power across a long retirement.
• Flexible spending frameworks: helping clients distinguish between fixed essential expenses and discretionary spending that can adjust if needed, reducing the risk of early depletion.

The RMA^® curriculum also addresses behavioral finance — the gap between how clients think about money and how they actually need to use it in retirement. Many retirees enter the decumulation phase with expectations shaped by accumulation-era thinking, which can lead to spending patterns that don’t match their actual resources. Advisors trained in RMA^® recognize those patterns and know how to reframe the conversation.

Why Healthcare Costs Are Central to Longevity Risk Management

Healthcare is the most unpredictable line item in any retirement budget. Fidelity’s 2025 Retiree Health Care Cost Estimate projects that a 65-year-old retiring today could spend an average of $172,500 on health care and medical expenses throughout retirement—and that figure doesn’t include long-term care.

The clinical reality compounds the financial one: nearly 95% of older adults have at least one chronic condition, and about 80% have two or more. Acute events like strokes or heart attacks can generate six-figure costs in a matter of weeks. Medicare covers many expenses, but out-of-pocket costs, supplemental premiums, prescription drugs, and any long-term care costs fall directly to the client.

Despite those numbers, one in five Americans says they’ve never considered healthcare needs in retirement planning. That gap between awareness and preparation is where advisors who hold the RMA® designation make a measurable difference: they’re trained to build realistic healthcare cost projections into retirement income plans from the start, not treat medical expenses as an afterthought.

This is also where the RMA^® intersects well with other Institute certifications. Advisors who hold both the RMA^® and CPWA^® (Certified Private Wealth Advisor^®) certification are equipped to handle healthcare planning within the context of a broader wealth strategy—including estate planning considerations if long-term care becomes necessary.

What Inflation Strategies Work Best for Long Retirements?

For retirees relying on fixed income streams—pensions, certain annuities, or bond ladders without inflation adjustments—erosion is a serious threat to their standard of living. RMA^®-trained advisors are equipped to address this through several specific strategies:

• Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS): TIPS adjust their principal with the Consumer Price Index, providing a direct hedge against inflation within a fixed-income allocation.
• Real asset classes: Real estate investment trusts (REITs) and commodity exposure have historically provided meaningful inflation hedges, though with higher volatility than TIPS.
• Social Security timing optimization: Because Social Security benefits are inflation-adjusted (via annual Cost of Living Adjustments), delaying claiming to age 70 can significantly increase inflation-protected lifetime income. RMA^® training covers the analysis advisors need to guide these decisions accurately.
• Inflation-adjusted annuities: When appropriate, RMA^® advisors can evaluate the trade-offs between immediate higher payouts and long-term purchasing power protection — a nuanced decision that depends heavily on client health, other income sources, and spending flexibility.

The goal isn’t to predict inflation precisely — it’s to build portfolios that remain sustainable across a range of inflationary environments.

How RMA^® Addresses the Behavioral Side of Retirement Planning

Financial anxiety in retirement is real and widespread. Clients who spent decades in accumulation mode often struggle with the psychological shift of drawing down assets they spent years building. Running out of money is one of the most commonly cited fears among retirees—sometimes eclipsing even health concerns.

RMA^® training incorporates behavioral finance because the technical plan is only part of the work. Advisors also need to help clients:

• Adjust to revised income expectations when the retirement they imagined doesn’t match what their assets can sustain
• Distinguish between fixed essential needs (housing, healthcare, utilities) and discretionary spending that can flex
• Maintain confidence in their plan during market downturns without making reactive decisions that compound sequence-of-returns risk

One of the core tools in the RMA^® framework is the Retirement Policy Statement (RPS)—a written document that codifies a client’s income goals, withdrawal strategy, spending parameters, and contingency plans. The RPS does something important that a financial model alone can’t: it gives clients a reference point they helped create, which reduces the likelihood of emotional decision-making when markets get difficult.

For advisors working with baby boomers—now the largest cohort entering retirement—this combination of technical rigor and behavioral fluency is what distinguishes practitioners who build lasting client relationships from those who simply manage portfolios.