Why Longevity Planning Is the Future of Financial Planning | The AgeTech Podcast S5E8 with Ira Sobel from the Longevity Academy
We talk a lot about planning for retirement – but what if “retirement” is just the halfway point of your life? In this episode, I sat down with Dr. Ira Sobel, founder of the Longevity Academy, to explore how we can prepare not just financially, but holistically, for a 100-year life. From the rise of Chief Longevity Officers to the gender gaps shaping late-life wealth, this conversation dives into how work, health, and purpose all intersect as we live longer than ever before.
Catch the full conversation on Youtube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or scroll down for the transcript (auto-generated, so pardon any oddities – the bots are still learning!)
Keren Etkin: . Ira, welcome to the show.
Dr Ira Sobel: Hi Keren, thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be here as a guest.
Keren Etkin: Thank you. I’m excited as well.
Dr Ira Sobel: so can you share a little bit about your personal background? ’cause you have a very unique career path.
Yeah, so my passion is everything to do in the intersection of finance and longevity. started my career as a CPA an accountant here in Tel Aviv. I specialized in financial services. worked in KPMG for about seven years, then I changed my career a bit. I was more a consultant to startups specializing in fundraising and innovation. And I also was a board member in many public traded companies, real estate, medical devices many others. And also today I’m a board member in the Bank of Jerusalem, which is a retail bank here in Israel. In PhD, or let’s say my academic career was in sociology, so everything to do with sociology of aging, focusing on people in the ages of 50 and above. So. My dissertation focused on the effect of life transitions on household wealth in Israel, but also in a comparative perspective. And I wanted to know how fast people dilute or deplete their wealth over time. What happens to people with different occupational histories, people with health conditions and how these different events or life transitions affect their speed or pace of wealth depletion. And this took me about six or seven years. was very, very interesting. So, longevity Academy. Is the fruit of my dissertation. I started the academy in the beginning of 2020.
Keren Etkin: Wow. I, I think you probably have one of the most unique career paths. In the ecosystem in general and the area in which that you’re focused on longevity planning. I think it is so critically important in this day and age when people suddenly have 20 or 30 years past retirement to to live, and not just to live their best life, but also to fund living their best life.
So can you maybe explain to us what is the difference between longevity planning and just regular financial planning?
Dr Ira Sobel: Okay, so financial planning is about planning. So we look at the future and we say, okay, we going to have enough wealth span? Meaning will we have enough money to live these longer lives or the life expectancies that we see today. ’cause as you know, and everybody knows in this ecosystem that babies that born today are more likely to live up to the a hundred or 19 95, 100.
So there’s a big question, are we going to finance our longer lives? Because the legislative age of retirement is lagging behind, life expectancy has increased dramatically in the past 10, 20, or even 50 years. But we are around 65, 67. Probably in the future it will raise to 70, but at the moment there’s a big gap between our life expectancy and the legal age of retirement. So financial aspects of financial planners or financial advisors, their aim is to help people bridge the gap between the legal age of retirement and. End of life. And this is better to do before in the fifties or sixties or before they retire. this is financial planning I looked all the time on the financial aspect of longevity or longevity, finance, financial longevity, you call it. But a few years ago, based on my. Very sad personal experience. My husband was diagnosed a few years ago with pancreatic cancer, and, and he eventually, he died in 2023. And I can tell you that this really changed my whole perspective on longevity and longevity finance.
It was a a deep move or shift in my mindset from. Focusing for focusing only on the financial aspects of longevity moving to more holistic approach because health and wealth go hand in hand, both on macro level and micro level. So. Let’s say if I focus a hundred percent on the financial aspects of longevity based on my background now, I’m really looking occupational longevity and health conditions of, of course, health span rather the lifespan and also on the financial. Aspects, living arrangements social aspects. So this really made a big shift in my mindset. So the difference or the main difference between financial planning and longevity planning is that longevity planning is very simple to understand. It’s much more holistic ’cause as I said, finance intersects with every other other domain in our life. Whether it’s work, whether it’s health, whether it’s where you live,
And I can tell you that this tragedy really changed my mindset from financial longevity to overall longevity planning.
Keren Etkin: Wow. Fascinating. And
Dr Ira Sobel: This is a wow. Yeah.
Keren Etkin: it’s remarkable that, you know, such a tragedy of losing your significant other radically changes your, the way that you view things and makes you do things differently. I wonder when, when people join the Longevity Academy, what, what do they learn?
I mean, how are they different after than what they were before?
Dr Ira Sobel: so we have a, a whole catalog of courses in the Longevity Academy. They’re all in English, and it’s for the international market, international audience, for, for professionals in organizations. So starting from age-friendly banking. Also, the effect of demography, changing demography on real estate capital markets. We also have a very successful course. I think this is our leader leading course is about women’s longevity. We call it the gift of time All the, all the courses in the academy, all the content is always a collaboration with international universities or international think tanks with experts from all over the world, whether it’s in finance, whether it’s in purpose, longevity finding employment, age-friendly banking.
I can give like two examples. We collaborate on the, women’s Longevity Course with three experts. One ha is from Spain, Barbara Ray Actis. She wrote the book about longevity with purpose.
So our courses are always a result of a very interesting collaboration with an international experts, and I can give a few examples. the course on age-friendly banking. Is with Ronald Long, who was the head of aging clients in Wells Fargo, which is a very interesting course. Other courses are on change, the effect of changing demography on real estate and cap capital markets with financial demography organization in the University of St. Gallen. And there’s also a recent course that we published a few months ago with experts on women’s longevity. So. My friends and colleagues from Spain, Barbara Ray Actis, who has written the book on longevity with purpose and also Emanuela Notari from Italy. She is talking about longevity, finance and also relationships and grandmotherhood and very interesting topics for both hr. In organizations or team leaders, organizations on women’s health, wealth, relationship and purpose. Another example is Dr. Liran Lavi Who is a doctor who specializes in longevity science. So we have an introductory course on longevity science for people who know, who want to understand what is longevity about from a medical aspect. So this is a short course that we for. Newcomers through the longevity market. Recently it’s the first time that we, I do a course in Israel, so we did a, a course, it’s called Longevity Planning. It’s the first in Israel. Very revolutionary in the mindset. We are doing now the first cohort in December, we are going to open the second cohort. Feedback’s a very good, but we are also trying to improve ourselves over time. It’s very, very interesting and I’m very happy about this initiative. Really. I love it. I think it’s an amazing course. We have about 40 people from different backgrounds, mainly from the financial industry, but not only, we also have a, a nurse in our course and a financial and then, and how do you call it?
Interior designers that specialize in all the people, but also people like insurance agents wealth advisors, participants from family offices, from asset management. Very interesting course. And I think that really this is now what I’m focusing on and we look forward to opening the, the second cohort in December.
Keren Etkin: Fascinating. So I understand that longevity planning differs from financial planning because. As longevity planning sort of looks at the person holistically, not just, it’s not just about wealth management or asset management. And I wonder do you see, ’cause we know that there is a difference between men and women when it comes to financial longevity because women tend to accumulate less throughout their lifespans.
And so they reach retirement age with less life savings overall. Do you see that Sometimes? Women compensate for that because they have other assets. May they have accumulated better lifelong friendships or other non-monetary assets.
Dr Ira Sobel: So the question is very interesting. Usually when we look at late Life, we perceive it as an accumulation or a result of the accumulation of what we have been building or doing until we retire. Or late life. I give an example. So if we have worked very hard all over years, so we are going to live better in retirement, and if our childhood health was quite well, we are more likely to have better health in our late life. is called the accumulation and the accumulation theory. So your late life more likely to be a result of what you have succeeded and accumulated over your life course. And this is especially interesting about women, especially relevant when it comes to women because we know, there’s a big gender gap in pension, gender gap in accumulation and wealth.
There’s a gender gap in housing ownership. And it’s because the formation of the traditional family is slowly, slowly decreasing. So what we mean is that we can see, for example, according to my research, that women that divorced quite early, I’m not talking about great divorce, that this is a different phenomenon about people who divorce in the seventies, we also see it. this is quite quite extreme in Israel. It doesn’t happen a lot. But what we can see is that women, especially women that divorced in the thirties and their forties, or even before they. They’re less likely to accumulate for pension when they’re, when they until they retire.
So, I wanna repeat this, okay? Okay. So. We know that there’s a gender gap in pension. There’s a gen gender gap in accumulation of wealth. There’s a gender gap in housing ownership, there’s a also gender gap in late life poverty. So there’s a gender gap everywhere. The reasons are quite common. People know because women are less, they earn less than men on average.
Okay? And they also spend time on a maternity leave. And also they are. Less likely to work so many hours than men. So these three these three things are the correlates or this are explain the, the gender gap in lead life and. I think that this is a big, big problem because women, of course, they, as everybody knows, they live longer.
The gender gap in life expectancy in Israel is about, is around four years, and can see that there’s differences within women. do we mean? So widowed women are better off than other women because they, during their life. So the ownership on the assets when they become widowed. The ownership of the assets are theirs.
And usually they know how to deal with their finances. But I think we need to focus on divorced women. Single women are also better off because they. They usually earn much as men. They have more time to invest in their careers, so when it comes to retirement, they’re better off than divorced women.
So widowed women and single women are better than divorced women. Divorced women is a big problem. Because here too, the legislation is lagging behind and no one compensates divorced women for the time that they need to invest in their kids. big breaks that they have to do in their work, and this all. Usually they don’t have they’re less likely to own a house, therefore, over time, divorced women are. Worse off than other women when it comes to retirement. And I think that like in other countries, for example, we need to compensate these women especially and see, okay, these women that were divorced, especially those who were who divorced quite early. They’re worse often than others, so probably we need to find a compensatory mechanism to help these women navigate their retirement and late life.
Keren Etkin: That is that is actually something, a piece of statistic that I was not aware of that divorced women. I mean, the women, I, I knew that women in general reached retirement with less wealth that I did not know that diverse women didn’t, couldn’t catch up. Like statistically overall. So once you get divorced, you typically don’t catch up and you don’t accumulate enough assets to reach retirement when you’re in a, when you’re well positioned to finance your life at the deaccumulation phase.
But it sounds like a, an opportunity not just for policy makers, but also for maybe for startups to, for FinTech startups in particular, to help. Women navigate their, their accumulation phase in life so well before retirement, decades before retirement. Helping women in particular navigate that phase and navigate their career in a way that helps them reach retirement in a, in a better position.
Divorced or not.
Dr Ira Sobel: Yeah, so this is an interesting point because there’s always the tension between saving for retirement or living better or need the necessity. So it depends. Depends the situation of, of, of women. But you know, you’re talking about policy makers. But I think there’s also the role of organizations we have to take into account because organizations have to be more aware about the gaps. Everyone has a gap. You know, that the the quality, the quality of life usually decreases after retirement in terms of finances. But I think preparation for retirement has to be taken into account more seriously in organizations. And helping people, not just like a few weeks before they retire, but starting from the age of 50.
So I wrote a newsletter about a few weeks ago about what would be the theoretical role of the Chief Longevity Officer in organizations and Chief Longevity Officer. I think this is something that. to be established in big organizations. So the different roles of the Chief Longevity Officer. One is taking care of the employer’s employees, work health, but also helping them. Navigate retirement, and this should be taken into account, I think starting from the age of 50 or 55. Actually, many people retire before the legislative age of retirement, so we call it like exit age. in many countries. The exit age from the labor market is. Up to 10 years before the legislative age of retirement.
And if you see, I think we have to look at people from the age of 50 until the age of retirement. And this is a big difference and. I think preparation has to be taken into, into a account more seriously. But again, not only from the financial aspects, even helping people finding, work or doing a gradual retirement. Which is a practice that is very rare on, on in organizations. also trying maybe to help people work with the organization as a consultant, as someone from in, in outsourcing after they retire. And again, special focus on women and divorced women that are more likely to become poor, very late in their life.
And or dependent on social security or dependent on the kids. And yeah. So I think it’s not only about policymakers, as I said, I think organizations, they are, look, if we talk, if we speak about organizations with hundreds of thousands of employees, we can look at them or perceive them as welfare states. Okay?
These are the, the welfare states of the market and they have a big role in helping people uh, navigate. the retirement or widowhood or changing health, other life transition that they are expected to experience late in their life.
Keren Etkin: Absolutely. So Chief Longevity Officers is definitely a role that employers should consider having. And we, I mean, we do see employers like you said, as welfare states or mini welfare states. Do. Work around their other, their employees, other needs that are outside of work. For example, if an employee enters the role of a caregiver, sometimes we see employers purchase all sorts of solutions for them to help them navigate their role as a caregiver, because it does benefit the employer to have the employer who’s also a caregiver.
Not miss out on work for quite so much or not retire early because of caregiving duties. So why not have a Chief Longevity Officer that also focuses on a, maybe extending that person’s time at the company because we assume that people who reach their, let’s say 50 or 55, have lots and lots of experience and are valuable employees at the company.
And also, like you said, helping them navigate, what are they going to do post-retirement with gradual retirement practices. So I think it’s a, it’s a really, really important role in this day and age as we transition to a society that is overall older. And these overall, I mean, the workforce is getting older and we do want, we, we do know that some economies struggle because they’re
e employees retire and they can’t necessarily replace that experience with younger employees.
Dr Ira Sobel: So I’ll tell you something very interesting or two things. Number one is I, I agree, the Chief Longevity Officer. Has to lead everything to do with caregiving rights. chief Longevity Officer has also to lead this change. And there’s a few things that are going on. There’s an NGO here in Israel, but also an international in the us. The numbers in the US I think there’s something between 40 and 50 million family caregivers that are taking care, either of their child parents or their children. And they lose a lot of days, sometimes months, losing their careers. And this is a big question, how they, the, the themselves are going to be well prepared for retirement because. They probably don’t have enough opportunities to save for retirement. So this is a big question about family caregiving, and I agree that we need policy makers and employers to take it much more seriously. So this is about family caregivers, but in general, the question is what does, how do organizations, what are they going to do in a 100 year life population. What does it mean for, for the employees? What does it, does it mean for customers, the taste of their customers? What does it mean for their, for their manual workers. So there are many, many question and what I did is I looked at about 10 companies their on their ESG reports, and I couldn’t find anything to do with longevity, aging, changing demography? Not in their environmental aspect, no, not from a social aspect and not from a governance aspect. So this is very interesting and I look at consumer. The largest consumer companies like Palmolive, like Nike and others. It was published in a newsletter. really found where, where issues were, they relate to the changing demography. And this is very interesting because. In the essence, social aspects should really consider the changing demography and how it affects both their customers and employees. We couldn’t find anything and we went to check in in consumer consumer organizations and we couldn’t find any. So I think that it’s really, really early. Probably it’s too early. And we can learn a lot from how the ESG has, uh, institutionalized in organization. Probably longevity is the next, next big thing.
Keren Etkin: Wow. It, it is amazing that you don’t find that. Even in the reports of consumer facing companies, because you would expect that they would be attuned to the macro changes that are happening in today’s world. I mean, I can’t imagine them not addressing the, the topic of AI. In, in their reports, or at least in their internal reports.
But not focusing or not addressing the, the demographic shift or longevity at all is amazing to me.
Dr Ira Sobel: not from a risk perspective and not from an opportunity perspective. So there’s also demographic risks. Probably people getting older, they can’t do a lot of work. They need to change, maybe they want to work less. These are things that could be also defined as risks, but there also big opportunities and. We’re expanding to new audiences, maybe older ones, maybe. Their needs are changing. Everything is changing, it was very, very interesting. We couldn’t find any substantial issues that are related to changing demography or longevity or aging or anything else. Yeah.
Keren Etkin: That is quite, quite remarkable and I hope it changes soon. Hopefully the Longevity Academy will bring, bring about this change because it is needed.
Dr Ira Sobel: Yeah, so we are building our course for longevity officers. So for CLOs, chief Longevity Officers, we need to first to increase awareness. And then to add more content to it and understand what the role of the Chief Longevity Officer is. So it’s always the question whether maybe we should open a course, people will come and learn about it, and then it’ll also be more embedded in organizations.
But. You know, we are still working on it. We’re going to do a ro round tables around these issues. Yeah, so it’s, it’s very interesting and I think that also it’ll be very important that Chief Longevity Officers will have the right technology. Or dashboard where they can really rule everything to do with retirement Cons, customers.
It’s really a strategic issue rather than HR issue, I think. We are still learning, we are still doing the product market fit speaking with HR and other executives and organizations to understand what are their aspects on. on longevity organizations.
Keren Etkin: Absolutely. I 100% agree that for consumer facing organizations and basically for any organization that has a large number of employees, understanding the demographic shift and its impacts on the business is a, is a strategic, thing that you need to do, rather than just an HR thing, we’re gonna send a fruit basket to whoever’s about to retire.
So Ira, that was actually my last question. Is there anything that we didn’t talk about that you would like to add? Any call to action to people in the audience?
Dr Ira Sobel: So I invite you all to visit our website and I can also, if you’re interested, people are invited to DM me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is my my main social network.
And if you want to learn more, so we can always send we send you an email with our catalog, so then you can see whatever is interesting. And for Israelis, I invite you to learn more about the longevity planning course that we’re, we’ll be starting on the 2nd of December, 2025.
Keren Etkin: It is an in-person course, right?
Dr Ira Sobel: is an in-person
Keren Etkin: It.
Dr Ira Sobel: And it’s not only sitting in class, we have. A few, let’s call it excursions.
yeah, so people learn also for themselves and also for their clients.
Keren Etkin: Brilliant. Ira, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. It was a pleasure chatting with you and learning from you.
Dr Ira Sobel: Thank you very much for having me, Keren. It’s always a pleasure speaking with you and yeah, let’s continue the conversation offline too.
Keren Etkin: For sure.