This announcement follows the launch of Allianz Retire+ Australian market-first solution, Future Safe, in March 2019. Future Safe is designed specifically for retirees and offers a simple way to access growth via returns linked to the sharemarket, with inbuilt downside protection to assist with managing the effect of sequencing risk on retiree portfolios.

In partnering with Investfit, Allianz Retire+ has the ability to offer financial advisers a portfolio construction tool that demonstrates how Future Safe can be effectively combined with other investments to provide greater certainty of outcomes. It also allows advisers to offer clients a higher degree of overall confidence when setting their individual retirement goals, with a more realistic understanding of what income they will be able to draw over their expected lifetime.

Jacqui Lennon, Head of Product and Customer Experience, Allianz Retire+ commented: “What we know is the number one fear retirees have is running out of money, in fact, they fear that more than death. So that is the number one risk we need to manage”.

“Traditional advice is often modelled against expected average investment returns, which offer about a 50% chance of achieving the projected retirement outcomes. That’s 1 in 2 clients that will have an outcome worse than what was presented. This tool is completely unique in its ability to offer advisers an extremely accessible way to give retirees greater peace of mind, while improving adviser efficiency in producing almost instantaneous results for hundreds of portfolios”.

Commenting on the partnership, Investfit Founder and CEO, James Claridge stated: “We are particularly delighted to be partnering with Allianz Retire+, an innovator in retirement funding and backed by global powerhouse, Allianz. The Team at Allianz Retire+ have developed Future Safe, a solution that enables retirees to continue to gain exposure to returns linked to Australian and Global shares whilst limiting the downside risk, which might otherwise threaten their retirement outcomes. We appreciate that Allianz Retire+ have chosen Investfit as their preferred tool to help advisers deliver great outcomes for their clients”.

Future Safe projections at different confidence levels

In recognition that advisers need to solve for portfolio longevity with adequate growth exposure and meet client confidence demands, the Investfit tool shows how Future Safe can be combined with other investments to generate potential returns for a client for a given level of short term risk. Investfit’s stochastic modelling runs portfolio simulations based on various inputs regarding financial position and goals – such as age, asset allocation, legacy and life expectancy – to a desired level of confidence. While the default for Future Safe simulations is set at 90% confidence, it also has the flexibility to be compared at 95%, 75% or 50% confidence that individual retirement goals will be met. These confidence levels are an estimate only given all financial projections used in the tool are based to some extent on historical data and therefore subject to uncertainty as the future may well be different to the past.

However, unlike traditional portfolio construction methods, Investfit leverages sophisticated technology to allow for variances in investment returns from year to year and takes into the account the fact it is not unusual to have a sequence of poor returns over a number of years. Investfit projects these variations and also takes into account the correlations between interest rates, inflation, property prices and share prices — that is, the tendency for them to move together or in opposite directions. Investfit also allows advisers to model a large number of possible strategies, rather than just the one that has been selected by default or based on a subjective “risk” questionnaire.

Lennon added: “Our Future Safe Investfit illustrations show modelled projections across over 1000 scenarios including selected income drawdown rates at a chosen level of confidence. This then arms advisers with projected data to demonstrate the impact of adding Future Safe into retirement portfolios to assist with mitigating sequencing risk, meaning retirees have higher confidence that they won’t run out of money”.

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