To Pay for Longer, Later Retirements, Consult a ‘Financial Gerontologist’

The training she has developed helps advisers understand the complexities that can accumulate as the years pile up: how to simultaneously finance children’s college education and parents’ in-home care; when to bring in adult children or other family members to collaborate on financial decisions; how to recognize if a long-term client is being financially exploited, or experiencing cognitive changes that are influencing their decision-making.

“We used to live what I would call a linear life: We were born, we went to school, we got out of school, we got a job, we got married, we had kids, we retired, we died,” Ms. Hutchins said. “What it’s become now is a series of different life stages that we didn’t used to have to plan for.”

Ms. Hutchins was named to the newly created role in 2014, shortly after obtaining her master’s degree from the University of Southern California’s Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. At the time, Merrill Lynch (which had not yet merged with Bank of America) was the first major bank to employ a financial gerontologist, and is still the only major one to use that title.

Being the first to hold this role gave Ms. Hutchins freedom to shape a subspecialty that is small but growing in significance.

Maria Henke, the senior associate dean at U.S.C.’s School of Gerontology, said, “We don’t really have a definition yet of what constitutes a financial gerontologist, because we don’t really have a hard and fast rule about who can call themselves a gerontologist in general.”

In contrast to the medical specialty of geriatrics, which focuses on the physical concerns of the later stages of life, gerontology is a multidisciplinary field that includes the social and psychological implications of aging and longevity.

Along with faculty members at U.S.C.’s gerontology school, Ms. Hutchins created a longevity training program for Merrill Lynch financial planners. Advisers who completed the course received a certificate from the university and credit toward their profession’s continuing education requirements. (Bank of America Merrill Lynch temporarily paused its longevity program last year to update the course materials, Ms. Hutchins said.)