Do Demographic Subgroups and Education Levels of Financial Planners Create a Difference of Opinion when Developing a Retirement Plan in South Africa?

Society’s reliance on financial planners, to provide a holistic overview on retirement, needs to be supported by unbiased fact. Greninger et al. (2000), found consensus between experts among a panel of 188 financial planners and educators. Consensus was found and there was agreement on the guidelines for planning assumptions and meeting family needs. Nine-tenths of the experts agreed that families should have achieved 50-60% of retirement savings goals by age 50 and 90% by age 60%. Although the consensus level was indeed high, there were noted differences between gender and occupation. Overall, there were more males (55%) than females (45%). Financial planners were predominantly male (77%) with educators predominantly female (59%) creating a significant relationship between occupation and gender in the sample. The study also revealed a significant difference in the educational level of the two occupational subgroups. As expected, most planners possessed bachelor degrees whereas most educators possessed postgraduate degrees up to a doctoral level. On the guidelines where there was a high level of agreement, it would be useful to know how the advice was influenced by varying demographic and educational backgrounds. This study is to determine what differences of opinion might exist between educational and demographic subgroups of financial planners.