We recently came across an InvestmentNews article highlighting new efforts by Merrill Lynch in the area of retirement income planning. Given the current state of the economy (and of investors’ retirement accounts), good planning is now more critical than ever to ensure that clients can retire comfortably - at least, relatively comfortably.

According to the article, the firm is starting a new retirement income training program for financial advisors called Merrill Lynch Retirement Income Framework, which is based on reviewing best practices of advisors across the country. While details of the training program are not provided, the article quotes Aimee DeCamillo, the firm’s head of personal retirement solutions, as saying that the program takes into consideration the risk of clients outliving their assets, inflation, health care costs and planning risks.

Merrill Lynch is also leveraging its connection with Bank of America, according to the article, by setting up a new program whereby clients with at least $250,000 in their retirement accounts can periodically transfer money to a Bank of America deposit account to provide convenient access to retirement income at local branches and ATMs. Clients can give their financial advisors permission to monitor the spending in their accounts to help assure that they remain on track.

Merrill Lynch has been one of the more outspoken firms with regard to retirement income planning for some time now. In fact, we published a research report on Retirement Income Planning almost two years ago, and even then, we highlighted Merrill Lynch as a leader. Despite the focus on retirement income, however, the firm has lacked the robust client-facing tools that we have seen from Fidelity. It will be interesting to see if Merrill Lynch will introduce new online features in conjunction with the new financial advisor push and Bank of America partnership.

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