Quick Listen: Darryl White on the Economic Implications of a Rapidly-Aging Society

Michael Torrance:

Welcome to Sustainability Leaders. I'm Michael Torrance, Chief Sustainability Officer with BMO Financial Group. On this show, we will talk with leading sustainability practitioners from the corporate, investor, academic, and NGO communities to explore how this rapidly evolving field of sustainability is impacting global investment business practices and our world.

Disclosure:

The views expressed here are those of the participants and not those of Bank of Montreal, its affiliates or subsidiaries.

Michael Torrance:

Today's episode is a special one featuring our CEO at BMO Financial Group, Darryl White. Darryl participated in a great panel discussion at the World Economic Forum moderated by Martine Ferland on the economic implications of a rapidly aging society. Let's listen to what Darryl had to say on this critical topic.

Martine Ferland:

The longevity economy is our topic today, and as actuary by trade, I've been fretting about changing the mindset around living longer lives. I have two little granddaughters and they'll probably see the year 2,100, which freaks me out a little bit, but it is what it is. And today at my age, I'm one out of 10 people in the world as a over 60-year-old, but in less than 30 years from now, it'll be one out of five. So just imagining the implication of all of this. And also that 80% of the older generation, older people, will be living in low to mid-level income countries by that time, as well as also a whole set of implications. So I'm excited to have a very interesting panel here with diverse background to talk about the topic today. Darryl White, who's the CEO of the Bank of Montreal. Darryl, you're a big employer, so you have a large colleague base to take care of. So what are your current thinking, and what are the type of strategies that you've seen to enable longer living?

Darryl White:

So Martine, it's such an interesting question. First of all, I tip my hat to the WEF for framing this as an important topic. I think it's probably an underdeveloped conversation, formally at least. I would say the framework that I find particularly interesting when we think about this conversation and this challenge, to me, it's this simultaneous transformation that's occurring on three different levels at the same time. One is longevity itself, but another is this concept of a complete paradigm shift from these defined life stages to what I like to think about, whether it's our clients or whether it's our employees, Martine, as financial resiliency. So I'm going to come back to that. And then the third is this multi-generational approach that we've got within how we think about financing the longevity. So if I just pick on the two of those for a second, when I look at the paradigm shift as I called it. So when you go back, we all remember many of us in this room were exactly trained this way in a post-war world.

You came through, as you said earlier, school, work, retirement. In fact, a lot of people probably had exact dates when those things were going to happen. I was going to go to school until now. I knew how much it was going to cost. I finance that. I work. I know how much I'm going to make, then I'm going to retire. I know how much I need to retire, and that's it. And you probably had a defined contribution and a defined benefit at the time as well. So that's pretty easy. That's simple. You would probably tell me that's laughable. That was, if you want to sort of live that way, you probably have to get a time machine and go back to the 90s. Right now, what we're seeing with all of the people that we deal with is that this is very fluid. This is a non-linear life where any of those events could be pulled forward.

I could decide that I want to start working earlier. I could decide that I want to retire later. I could decide that I want to have various recommits to careers as I reinvent myself. So all of this ends up having to be very fluid as you go through your planning. And it's exactly effectively the opposite of this modular set to life. Okay, so point one. Point two, multi generational. By the way, on point one, I think we're woefully unprepared for this, woefully unprepared, and I don't want to put a cloud in this. We can talk about solutions at some point in this conversation, I'm sure. But when we look at your company as your, I think you call it the Retirement Readiness Index.

Speaker 6:

Yes,

Darryl White:

Eight is considered high. The world is at six. Six is three quarters of eight by my math. We're three quarters ready or something like that. In my country, in Canada, it's also six.When we look at our surveys, 80% of people over the age of 55 say that they don't even come close to having enough retirement income, "not nearly enough." They will say the West's done a bunch of work on this. 19 countries around the world, people are worried about it. So I think we're right to worry about it. When you look at the second point though, on multi-generation, anyone want to take a guess? 18 to 29 Americans, aged 18 to 29, how many of them live with their parents? What percentage? Anyone want to guess? 25, 45?.

Martine Ferland:

45.

Darryl White:

It's 50. Half of Americans age 18 to 29 live with their parents. So again, this notion of I'm 23 years old, I graduate, I go and get a house, I get married, I settle down, it's over. So that's over. Now, in that household, we're probably worried about elder care.We're worried about the co-mingling of the financing of those people, the 50% that are in the home as well. And what we saw through the pandemic is a whole bunch of estate planning acceleration at the same time. So all of this is happening at the same time as this a hundred-year question that you're asking. So three layers of complication. Those individually, I would argue, are complicated problems when you compound them. I think this is a really, really interesting point. We're all working on solutions. We can talk about that if you want, but to me, that's how I frame the challenge.

Martine Ferland:

And one thing that's very important, actually, as you said, the WEF has set up this session, so thanks to that, we need longevity literacy. We need to understand what that means. If there's any questions from...Yeah, there is from the audience, we'll start an exchange here.

Alexandra:

Hello, I'm Alexandra. As the biggest life insurance and health insurance in Poland, this topic is overwhelming. And I thought maybe you have some thoughts about, because we also talk with our corporate clients as employers because they have impact on a lot of people, so maybe there should be some special roles in different employers, different companies like coaching on health, et cetera. What do you think about this

Darryl White:

The financial literacy and the education component that we have a responsibility for with our own employees as large employers as well as the communities at large, I think is very important. And I think it's also important to touch on the fact that single channel communication and education, particularly through social apps, is not enough. I don't have a dog in this fight, by the way, because we have products, whether you want to do self-serve, we have products, whether you want to do full serve, advice, great advisors like Lard has and have and lots of other companies have. But in a world that's increasingly complex, Alexandra, to me, the answer to your question isn't going to be solved by two clicks and I'm off to the races because I'm busy, I've got a lot of other things to do.

So the more we can do to educate and encourage people to have advisors in their life and understand that the multi-channel solution to multi-variable problems is a way to success is really important. And I'm worried about it, because I'm worried that there's a generation who do live by two clicks, and then ultimately you wake up, it's 10, 15 years later and you actually never got on the right path in the first place.

Martine Ferland:

In the interest of time, I want to just finish up and close us by having a quick rapid fire, 30 seconds from each of my panelists to tell us when it comes to longer lives, what's their key priorities in 2023, whether it's personal or professional. Darryl-

Darryl White:

Mine's innovation. I think that what got us here is not going to get us to the future. There's some solutions we've talked about here. We're working on many. If you look at employee ownership trust, for example, in the United States where we can transfer shares of a company into a trust and we can therefore distribute to. We're a big lender. We should do that in Canada. We're working on that legislatively. The point though is innovation. Don't think about all of the techniques that got us here today, wide open to all sorts of new ways of doing things

Martine Ferland:

Thank you, Darryl.

Michael Torrance:

Thanks for listening to Sustainability Leaders. This podcast is presented by BMO Financial Group. To access all the resources we discussed in today's episode and to see our other podcasts, visit us at bmo.com/sustainabilityleaders. You can listen and subscribe free to our show on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider, and we'll greatly appreciate a rating and review and any feedback that you might have. Our show and resources are produced with support from BMO'S marketing team and Puddle Creative. Until next time, I'm Michael Torrance. Have a great week.

Disclosure:

The views expressed here are those of the participants and not those a Bank of Montreal, its affiliates or subsidiaries. This is not intended to serve as a complete analysis of every material fact regarding any company, industry strategy or security. This presentation may contain forward-looking statements. Investors are caution not the place undue reliance on such statements as actual results could vary. This presentation is for general information purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal or tax advice, and is not intended as an endorsement of any specific investment product or service. Individual investors should consult with an investment tax and or legal professional about their personal situation. Past performance is not indicative of future results.