If you’re like most financial advisors, you’ve supported your clients through many phases of life, and now, a number of them are enrolling in Medicare. As your clients enter into this next phase, they’re likely to come to you for answers to their questions about health care in retirement. By educating yourself and your team on how to respond to these concerns, you can provide a value-added service to guide older clients through this time of transition.

On January 1, 2018, the Uniformed Services Blended Retirement System (BRS) was established. This program marks the first change to the U.S. retirement system in 70 years—and an unprecedented opportunity for financial advisors to help generations of service members. The BRS is separate and distinct from the military’s traditional legacy pension, although it does not end the legacy pension for those with more than 12 years of service. It does, however, create a significant choice for current service members with fewer than 12 years of service and starts an era of retirement planning for new service members. Here, we’ll take a deep dive into the BRS, including the unique planning opportunity it presents for you.

The mass exodus from traditional defined benefit pension plans is a reflection of several trends. Primarily, employees are living longer, and updated IRS life expectancy tables have increased the cost of providing a defined benefit plan accordingly. Additionally, the prolonged low-interest-rate environment has reduced funds’ investment returns, which means plans need additional capital to stay afloat. Lastly, underfunding of pension plans has led to more government regulations, which has increased the cost of offering defined benefit plans as well.

As a financial professional, you routinely ask clients for their estate planning documents. You also factor health care expenses into your retired clients’ financial plans. But have you thought about advising attorneys-in-fact about retirement health care? If you have Gen X and younger boomer clients with aging parents, or if you advise different generations of the same family, you might consider adding this service to your menu.

To help you decide if this path might be right for you, let me introduce you to your new (fictional) client, Zak, who is an attorney-in-fact for his aging parents.

Did you know that to cover their retirement health care costs, a healthy 55-year-old couple may consume 92 percent of their social security benefits? Or that “total projected lifetime health care premiums . . . for a healthy 65-year-old couple retiring this year are expected to be $321,994 in today’s dollars ($485,246 in future dollars)”? These are staggering figures, and they highlight how important it is for advisors to guide clients through potential health care expenses in retirement.