Buyer Competence

The problem of product complexity is compounded by older consumers for whom mental competence may also be a question.

As people grow older, they seek their own ways of coping with the consequences of aging. For senior clients, the actual or perceived loss of control can have dramatic implications. For example, older people typically experience:

• Apprehension or fear about physical and emotional changes.


• Eyesight, hearing, and tastes may start to falter.


• Shortness of breath and fatigue following activities once performed with ease.


• Loss of faculties, short-term memory or judgment.

Financial advisers are not expected to be clinical psychologists, but they do need to recognize signs that prospective insureds lack the short-term memory or the judgment knowingly to buy insurance products.

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Ohio National is not affiliated with, nor does it endorse or sponsor, any particular prospecting, marketing or selling system.

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