Nationwide Introduces Online Retirement Planning Tool

Investment professionals wanting to help clients better plan for retirement investing and distribution now have access to a tool capable of modeling both. Columbus, Ohio-based Nationwide Financial has introduced its Nationwide preVIEW tool, located on the company's sales and service center Web site at www.bestofamerica.com. "Investing for retirement is only half of the retirement financial equation," said Richard A. Karas, president of Nationwide Financial Services Distributors Inc. "Investment professionals should be enabled with answers to the complete equation, which includes calculating accumulation and distribution needs. This tool can help producers develop personal defined benefit plans for their clients."

The tool is designed to help connect distribution and accumulation needs so clients have life-long investing and income plans, to help ease some of the difficult decisions made at the time of retirement. By inputting data such as current investment amounts, age, planned retirement age, projected rate of return and distribution strategy, investment professionals can help clients understand their potential financial situation at the time of retirement.

Clients can then view and contrast annuitization and systematic withdrawal distribution strategies based on their projected investments. If the calculated investment amount results in a shortfall when distributed as monthly income, the investment professional can work backward and display what modifications can be made to help fill in the gap.