Two thirds of UK high net worth individuals and ultra HNWs anticipate a serious drop in their income on retirement, but only one in four have taken professional advice on how to change their investments and asset allocations to meet this income shortfall. A new study by London-based Tulip Financial Research found that the average age of HNWs and UHNWs is around 60 and, because wealthy 60-year-olds can now expect to live into their nineties, planning retirement income has become both more important and more difficult. Whilst most of today’s retired HNWs and UHNWs were satisfied that their retirement incomes would match their lifetime needs, the majority of those coming up to retirement were not. In fact only 34 per cent were confident that their retirement income would match their requirements, said the report. The wealthy nowadays anticipated that much less than half of their retirement income would come from occupational pensions and, although this would be supplemented by state and personal pensions, the critical and substantial additional income would have to be derived from their personal investments. Liquid assets will have to be worked hard to provide additional income for many of the future years of retirement. Planning investment income as opposed to capital growth will become the planning mantra, but many working HNWs and UHNWs have not yet grasped the investment implications. Filling this retirement gap should, in principle, be a major opportunity for the wealth professionals. But the study showed that wealth professionals were not being proactive. One in four of prospective wealthy retirees were taking no professional advice on their retirement plans, while the remainder were mostly using either their employer’s human resources capability or an IFA. Very few prospective wealthy retirees were taking advice from the wealth investment professionals, their private banks, asset managers or investment managers or investment management companies. And for all the wealth groups – HNWs, UHNWs and the top echelons of the mass affluent – the most trusted advisor for retirement investment planning was their IFA. And while three-quarters of the wealthy said they had taken active steps to avoid inheritance tax, they claimed to have protected, on average, only a third of their assets. The most popular step taken was to divide assets equally between the partners and to transfer assets to children and grandchildren. But few had taken any other significant steps and this was another opportunity for wealth professionals. "This report demonstrates a major opportunity for advisors to the wealth market, for their IFAs, private banks, asset managers and fund managers to secure major new business," said John Clemens, managing partner of Tulip Financial Research. "Many wealthy private investors are fully aware of the need to change their investment strategies to secure satisfactory retirement incomes and of the need to protect their capital against IHT. Few have acted, and most have not even discussed the problems with their financial advisors. The opportunity is for advisors to promote actively their abilities to provide solutions to these problems." The Tulip study, “HNW Retirement Income Plans & Expectations,” looked at the wealthiest 5 per cent in the UK defined only by their liquid assets – around 1.7 million households. These were subdivided into the mass affluent with 1.3 million households, HNWs with 240,000 households and UHNWs with 96,000 households. These too were getting disproportionately richer. Their liquid assets had grown since 2005 by well over 50 per cent, with those of the UHNWs growing at the fastest rate – up 66 per cent.