Where baby boomers have shown a proclivity to ‘nest’ in a desirable place over the winter months in their retirements, Scott is seeing more of a preference for adventure among gen X and millennials. Those generations’ overall consumer preference for experience and exposure to travel through much of their lives has seen a shift away from a retirement split between two locations. These generations, Scott says, are more transient and are willing to take a very different form of retirement.
That is not to say there aren’t shorter-term factors impacting snowbirds’ demand for US properties. Scott notes that in addition to political tensions, the cost of home insurance in hurricane-ravaged Florida and the wildfire-threatened Southwest US have made these properties prohibitively expensive to maintain. But those forces, he notes, are perhaps less relevant for advisors looking at their careers than the larger economic and demographic trends he highlights.
So much of a cross-border advisor’s career, Scott explains, was built around the preferences and tastes of the baby boomer generation. The largest and wealthiest generation in North American history set the tone and the tempo for advisors, becoming snowbirds, preferring travel in the US, and now entering their twilight years showing a preference for proximity to cancer centres, quality long-term care homes, and the next generations of their families. As that generation begins to twilight, financial advisors in the cross-border space need to find out how younger generations will impact them.
Where Scott continues to see demand for cross-border advice, he says, is in those Canadians who work, rather than retire, in the United States. Managing their needs around taxation, various overlapping forms of investment accounts, and any eventual moves back north of the border in either retirement or a career change remains highly in demand. Moreover, while the snowbird trend may slow with generational shifts, there is still an ongoing need for cross-border advice, even if it’s more focused on the disposal of retirement assets than it is on building a dream retirement.
While he calls out these fundamental shifts in demographic trends, as well as shorter-term tailwinds and headwinds, Scott emphasizes the fact that right now cross-border advice is still a growing business, constrained more by accountants’ capacity than advisors’ willingness to take on more work.
