Arguably, the future of designing portfolios for accumulators in particular is that the asset class and sector exposures of the portfolio should be adjusted around the risk/return characteristics of the worker's job.

Focusing on a client's investment portfolio alone ignores their greatest asset - their ability to continue earning income through the fruits of their labor, also known as their "human capital". Deciding how much risk to take with financial capital given a client's human capital risks is crucial.

Our eclectic Panel - a politician, a pastor, a professor, a portfolio manager, a practitioner, a provocateur, and a 'preneur, moderated by our Publisher - addresses Conference 2015 delegates' questions about key Crossroads, Dilemmas and Decisions.

The danger that “sequence of return risk” can devastate a retirement portfolio is both increasingly recognised and frequently misunderstood. Three concrete, research-driven strategies can help manage it.

By understanding our own Time Perspective and learning to recognise different Time Perspectives in others, we can better understand and influence retirement planning behaviour.

It is time to properly account for risk characteristics of client’s most valuable asset - their human capital. This isn’t easy to implement and places practitioners in a difficult situation...

Individuals have three types of capital - financial capital (pretty obvious, everybody understands that) as well as human capital and social capital. All three affect our financial and retirement decisions.

A simple ratchet-style "safe" withdrawal rate approach, where spending is increased by 10% any time the portfolio rises more than 50% above its starting value, beats the traditional 4% rule, generating equal or better retirement spending, even while being conservative enough to not require a spending cut in the event of a market pullback in the future.

The classic 4% rule holds withdrawals at 4% of the initial value of the portfolio at retirement. A great deal of recent research has focused on strategies that adjust withdrawals depending on investment experience.

The surprising result of a recent study is that the "conventional" view that earnings rise steadily (above inflation) throughout our careers is not accurate. Good spending habits established early on can make an astounding difference to wealth over a lifetime.

This paper offers a surprising amount of info and interesting ways of framing investment issues in retirement, and some good analysis of longevity risk.

The real distinction in retirement income philosophies is not about which are "safe" and which are not. It is whether risk is transferred or retained (and if retained, managed).