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holistic planning How technology and genetics will impact financial planning by Mark Burgess George Orwell wrote that “At fifty, every man has the face he deserves.” The expression may have surpris- ing applications to financial planning. Wealth management is about predicting the future. This is even more true of insurance, where mortality tables — more commonly called life tables now — have been used for centuries to determine how long someone will live. Advances in genetics, medicine and artificial intelligence (AI) are creating new possibilities for forecast- ing longevity on a more personal level. S. Jay Olshansky, a professor at the University of Illi- nois at Chicago’s School of Public Health, says the prob- lem with traditional methods of measuring lifespan is that no person is average. “The information that comes from these tables is for an average individual in a population,” he says. “The variation in longevity and health that you can expect in a population varies dramatically by the personal attributes that the individual has — those that are inherited and those that are acquired during the course of life.” Olshansky and others are offering methods to track both types of attributes in an effort to more accurately predict how long someone will live. As average lifespans extend, a common concern for clients is running out of money. Being able to forecast the number of healthy years a client is expected to live could impact various aspects of their financial plans, from the level of investment risk to insurance needs to timing pension draw-downs. “The big issue we’re all trying to figure out is \\\[whether\\\] there are mortality predictors,” says Karen Cutler, vice-president and chief underwriter at Manulife. A technique known as “face age” is one of a number of new methods, along with genetic testing and tracking family history, that could be incorporated into financial planning as advisors seek to predict longevity with more precision. How useful are these tools, and how might they be adopted? Biological age versus chronological age If not a window to the soul, a person’s face is becoming a reliable biomarker indicating the rate at which they’re aging, Olshansky says. “The children of centenarians throughout their lives have always looked 10, 20, sometimes 30 years younger than their chronological age,” he says. “We think this is happening because, biologically, they’re aging at a slower rate. So while somebody may chronologically be 60 or 70 years old, biologically they might be 30 or 40. And we’re picking up this signal from the face.” Olshansky’s Lapetus Solutions offers a facial analytics tool that scans photographs, examining hundreds of regions on the face to provide estimates for a person’s lifespan and the number of healthy years they’re expected to live. 28 OCTOBER 2019 Seeing the future? ILLUSTRATIONS: ANDY BAKER / GETTY IMAGES