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 gets in the way. If someone has $500,000 in home equity, that's their long-term-care policy."

Providing a lifetime income stream is also a challenge. Annuities might be an obvious-and, more important, suitable-solution for a younger client, but "after 70, we're looking pretty hard at the fit for a variable annuity," Crumpacker says. FINRA rules are deservedly strict about selling annuities that may not pay out for many years to elderly clients.

Advisors must meet financial goals with a judicious asset allocation. "They're not looking for big returns, but rather safety," Henrickson says. "If you do it right, your client won't need guaranteed products to survive down markets. Once a client is in her eighties, if she's hit hard by the economy, you really have to look yourself in the mirror as her advisor." Whether it's bonds, stocks, mutual funds or ETFs, Henrickson stresses that advisors must err on the side of capital preservation over growth.

HEALTH AND HAPPINESS

Perhaps the most striking difference in working with those over 75 is just how much more involved the relationship between advisor and client can be. "You're not just dealing with a financial need," says Neil Piper, an Invest rep at Sun National Bank in Vineland, N.J. "Advisors must understand seniors' social and health issues too."

To better understand these issues, Piper, who works on the retiree-rich Jersey Shore, studied for certification from the Denver, Colo.-based Society for Certified Senior Advisors, which included a three-day training session and exam.

You need to ask about the client's health, whether he or she has children, lives alone, and is physically and mentally competent. You also need to figure out how far you can go to meet a client's non-financial needs. "I picked up a client at the train station because he had health issues," says Piper. "But if you want to excel in this market, you have to determine how much is financial and how much of your time you can realistically donate. We're not social services, we're financial advisors."

Advisors need to realize that there are plenty of people far better qualified to provide social and healthcare support, says Ray Ferrara, a fellow CSA and certified financial planner who is president and CEO of ProVise Management Group in Clearwater, Fla. "The best thing to do is to find community organizations that help elderly people stay on top of bills, fill in Medicare forms and who will drive them to the store. It takes time and commitment to build relationships with these organizations, but since most advisors don't bother, it's an opportunity to become someone who gets people connected, and that's always a great referral source."

A case in point, Ferrara sits on the board of a local hospital. While he's doing his bit for the greater good, Ferrara is also rubbing shoulders with medical professionals through whom he can access the best places to refer his clients. "It's simply a case of networking just as you would with CPAs and attorneys," he says.

Alzheimer's disease can be a huge problem, destroying clients' lives and putting advisors at risk of losing assets or lawsuits from heirs if they don't ensure every client decision is documented. "I had a client in the other day asking repetitive questions, and I have to ask whether he can truly, actively engage in a financial relationship," Piper says. "It's hard to call his wife and say her husband may have Alzheimer's, but you can't ignore it."