Examining why clients defer financial decisions, what waiting can cost, and practical ways for advisers to help clients move from agreeing with a recommendation to acting on it.
  

Key points

• Decision paralysis can be a hidden retirement risk.
  
• Often, clients may delay action even when they understand and agree with their adviser’s recommendations.
• Long-held accumulation habits can be hard to reverse
• Fear of an uncertain future can drive hesitation
• Putting boundaries around future risks can help clients move forward
  
  
  
• Most advisers have sat through the meetings where everything goes well. The plan shows the client can afford the retirement they want, the projections hold up under stress testing, and there are significant tax savings to be achieved if the adviser’s recommendations are followed. The client agrees with all of it. Then asks for some time to think.
  
  And then a bit more.
  
  For many Australians, the greatest emerging threat to retirement outcomes is no longer market volatility or inadequate savings, but a hesitancy to make the decisions retirement requires. Because of this hesitancy, and the wisdom hardwired into clients during the accumulation years, retirement strategies that appear financially optimal but psychologically challenging are unlikely to be adopted, regardless of modelling outcomes. 

A habit that was rewarded for decades

For most of the accumulation years, the sensible thing to do was nothing. Leave the super balance alone, avoid tinkering with investment choices and let markets do the work. Clients who were able to ‘stick fast’ were usually rewarded with better outcomes over the long term, and the instinct hardened into something close to a rule.

Retirement asks for the opposite. The shift from deferring everything to making big decisions can feel like ‘going from fifth gear to reverse’^¹, and the natural response is to fall back on what has always worked.

How fears about the future shape decisions today

The Two-Chapter framework helps explain why the urge to defer is so strong. Retirees in Allianz Retire+ research conducted by fiftyfive5, part of the Accenture Song group, described retirement in two parts². The first chapter, roughly the first 10 to 15 years, is easy to picture: travel, renovations, time with the grandchildren. The second, from about 75, is hard to picture at all and tends to be handled through fear rather than planning. Some researchers have suggested the distant future self can feel like a stranger³, and putting a decision off means not having to think about that person just yet. The fear also reaches back into the first chapter, where it shows up as reluctance to commit. Clients hold back from spending, from acting on advice they agree with, and from any decision that looks hard to unwind.

Planning for the aged care unknowns

Aged care isn’t always an easy conversation to have. For many clients, it can mean thinking about changes to their health, independence or living arrangements that still feel a long way off. It’s understandable that they may prefer to leave those conversations for another day. But talking about it earlier can give clients more time, and more choice, to think about what they would want if their circumstances change.

Advisers can help make that conversation feel less daunting by helping clients focus on what’s important as their health needs change over time. That might include staying in their own home for as long as possible, making some changes around the home, accessing home care services, or simply understanding what their options could look like. It’s also an opportunity to talk about whether they want to set aside some of their savings as a reserve for future needs, rather than waiting until those expenses arise.

Overall, having the conversation doesn’t mean clients need to have everything worked out today. It’s about helping them think ahead, understand their choices and make sure their retirement plan has enough flexibility to respond if life changes. 

What waiting can cost

Deferral feels free because nothing visibly happens. No invoice arrives for the decision that was not made, so it helps to quantify the very real costs of indecision.

Super Members Council (SMC) research points to complexity as another cause of decision paralysis and quantified the outcomes⁴. It found around 700,000 Australians over 65 who are no longer working full-time still hold a taxed accumulation account, despite being eligible for a tax-free retirement account. SMC estimated that complexity-driven paralysis and poor decision-making could cost a typical retiree up to $136,000 over the course of retirement, showing how much can be at stake when complexity causes decision avoidance. CPA Australia has made a similar point, warning that trillions of dollars could stay locked in retirement savings because retirees have to switch their own income on⁵.

Helping clients move from understanding to acting

Moving a client from agreeing with a recommendation to acting on it rarely needs more analysis. It usually needs the decision to get smaller and clearer. A few approaches are worth trying:

• Clarify the decision - Name it in a single sentence and say what it changes for the client. A recommendation presented as a package is harder to act on than one named as a single step, such as moving a balance to the retirement phase where that is appropriate or setting aside an agreed amount for aged care. Phrasing the step as a question may help too: recently released research on retirement communication, by Ann Kronrod, found that questions prompted more concrete thinking about retirement than statements did⁶.
• Compare acting with not acting - Show the cost of waiting next to the cost of acting. Where a delay has a calculable cost, show it as a yearly figure, and be equally clear about what the client gives up by going ahead.
• Break the decision into steps - Sequence the decisions, starting with the one the client finds least threatening, and give each its own date. Each step then feels less like a bet on the whole of retirement.
• Treat deferral as a decision with an end date - If a client wants more time on a particular item, agree when it will be revisited and what would help them decide. Reviews are a natural place to keep this moving.

It’s important to note that indecision is not the same as choosing not to act. A client who has weighed the options and chooses to wait has still made an active decision, and that is fine. The clients to focus on are those whose waiting comes from habit or fear rather than preference.

Commmitment diversification: where AGILE fits

Underneath much of this is an aversion to commitment itself, and the fear of irreversibility is a large part of it. Clients want certainty and flexibility at the same time, and they discount strategies that look hard to unwind. SMC found that just 6% of retirees currently use a lifetime income product, with concerns about locking away a large portion of savings among the key deterrents⁷. Income layering mitigates some of these concerns, acting as a form of ‘commitment diversification’.

Rather than going all-in on one strategy, treating guaranteed income as one layer within a broader approach not only diversifies the sources of income but also reduces the fear of making an irrevocable decision. Allianz Guaranteed Income for Life (AGILE) lets clients calibrate how much of their income they choose to guarantee while keeping flexible access to capital if circumstances change. For a client stalled on the biggest decision, a smaller first commitment may be easier to make than an all-or-nothing one.

From agreement to action

The client who agrees with everything in the meeting and then asks for a bit more time is rarely being difficult. They are following a rule that served them well for decades, and a single meeting seldom changes that. Making the cost of waiting visible, giving the biggest worry a boundary and keeping each decision small enough to take is often enough to turn that agreement into action.

References

1.  The Grass is Greener (podcast), ‘Beyond the Headlines: An Adviser’s Audio Diary’, 16 October 2026, interview with Catherine van der Veen, Allianz Retire+ (comment at approx. 16:45):  https://open.spotify.com/episode/1hNZ6F344PVYY68w8tvhnG

2.  Allianz Retire+ research: retiree insights, November 2024, conducted by fiftyfive5, part of the Accenture Song group, as presented in The Two-Chapter Retirement: https://www.allianzretireplus.com.au/campaign/the_two_chapter_retirement1.html

3.  Hershfield, H.E., Goldstein, D.G., Sharpe, W.F., Fox, J., Yeykelis, L., Carstensen, L.L. and Bailenson, J.N. (2011). Increasing saving behavior through age-progressed renderings of the future self. Journal of Marketing Research, 48 (Special Issue), S23–S37: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3949005/

4.  Super Members Council, Retirement revolution: Simpler smarter retirement, October 2025 (executive summary and report summary): https://smcaustralia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/251028-SMC-Retirement-Report-2_Final-.pdf and https://smcaustralia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Retirement-revolution_Simpler-smarter-retirement_Report-summary-251128.pdf

5.  CPA Australia, Super funds must solve retirement phase or risk locking trillions out of the economy (media release), 16 September 2026: https://www.cpaaustralia.com.au/about-cpa-australia/media/media-releases/super-funds-must-solve-retirement-phase-or-risk-locking-trillions-out-of-the-economy

6.  Kronrod, A. (2026). How can questions encourage engagement with retirement planning? A good question. Journal of Consumer Research (advance article, published online 10 July 2026): https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucag021

7.  Super Members Council, Retirement revolution: Simpler smarter retirement, October 2025, ‘Lifetime income products and retiree behaviour’ (Pyxis survey, June 2025): https://smcaustralia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/251028-SMC-Retirement-Report-2_Final-.pdf

This material is issued by Allianz Australia Life Insurance Limited, ABN 27 076 033 782, AFSL 296559 (Allianz Retire+). Allianz Retire+ is a registered business name of Allianz Australia Life Insurance Limited. This information is current as at October 2026 unless otherwise specified and is for general information purposes only. This information has been prepared specifically for authorised financial advisers in Australia and is not intended for retail investors. It does not take account of any person’s objectives, financial situation or needs. Before acting on anything contained in this material, you should consider the appropriateness of the information received, having regard to your objectives, financial situation and needs. The returns on Allianz Guaranteed Income for Life (AGILE) and AGILE Super+ are subject to a number of variables including investor elections, market performance and other external factors, and may differ from the information contained herein. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. No person should rely on the content of this material or act on the basis of anything stated in this material. Allianz Retire+ and its related entities, agents or employees do not accept any liability for any loss arising whether directly or indirectly from any use of this material. Use of the word ‘guarantee’ in this material refers to an assurance that certain conditions or contractual promises will be fulfilled by Allianz Retire+ from the available assets of its Statutory Fund No 2, in relation to the product terms. This includes ‘guaranteed’ income payments in the Lifetime Income Phase which will be paid from the available assets of Statutory Fund No 2, noting that Allianz Retire+ may terminate the product in certain limited circumstances as outlined in the Product Disclosure Statement referred below. Allianz Australia Life Insurance Limited is the issuer of AGILE and AGILE Super+. Prior to making an investment decision, investors should consider the relevant Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) and Target Market Determination (TMD) which are available on our website (www.allianzretireplus.com.au).