Disability impacts 1:7 Americans* (that is 42 million people) directly and touches many more lives indirectly. More than likely, advisors with a mature book have clients affected by special needs who wish to do as much life and financial planning as possible (perhaps even more so now), and a frustratingly small, and often prohibitively expensive, toolkit of ways with which to help them.
There is a way to meet this market need and to be paid for advisory work without creating a specialty practice, Googling for unreviewed lists of providers, or recommending clients incur thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Meet the Pooled Special Needs Trust (PSNT). Haven’t heard of it? You’re in excellent company.
At the Special Needs Financial Services InstituteTM (SNFSI), we have meticulously researched, evaluated, and ranked the 100+ nonprofit administrators of pooled special needs trusts based on five criteria and associated metrics. These metrics include financial sustainability, governance and leadership, client service, cost to beneficiaries, and social impact.
These organizations provide stewardship of beneficiary assets and oversee distributions, and many offer other essential services to people with disabilities and their caregivers. Costs to establish a pooled trust are significantly lower than creating a stand-alone special needs trust, and because of the structure, the initial deposit requirements are also substantially less.
Depending on an advisor’s business model, compensation can be for advice and managing the assets that will fund the trust over time. Funding can come from liquid assets, life insurance policies, inherited IRAs, and other assets.
Lifetime costs to support a person with a disability are significant; planning, financial tools, resources, programs, access to means-tested benefits, and intergenerational support are critical to a successful outcome. There is a significant opportunity to help clients with a critically important need and fully develop your practice simultaneously.
To put this idea to use in your practice, reach out to us at SNFSI. We look forward to it.
*Source: Census Bureau
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