Finance players will need to be innovative in creating new investment opportunities for the nation's growing ageing population, Reserve Bank  (RBA) deputy governor Glenn Stevens said.

Mr Stevens said rising life expectancy meant earlier notions of retirement age and asset sufficiency would be revisited, affecting financial markets and institutions.

"In a world which people live longer and enjoy longer retirement, they will need to build a higher stock of savings with which to retire," he said during an address to financial planners on the Gold Coast.

"For a given length of working life, this would require a higher rate of saving in each of their working years, and lower annual consumption every year of their life."

While this responsibility partially lies on the individual, financial planners and the financial planning industry must adopt new instruments that respond to the changing needs of the population, said Mr Stevens in his speech entitled Finance and the Ageing Population.

"Instruments which facilitate the transformation of assets into long-run income streams will presumably be increasingly needed," he said.

"Retirement ages will tend to naturally rise in the future as people realize that they need more resources for their lengthening lives.

"Financial planners can assist that natural, and inevitable, development by giving appropriate advice."

Mr Stevens said there will be no shortage of work for financial service workers, as people come to terms with the many issues surrounding ageing and focus more on their saving, investment and retirement decisions.

Due to the importance of such issues, the financial planning industry will be subject to heightened scrutiny, he said.

"Because the increasing longevity will likely mean an ever-increasing focus on the adequacy of assets, rates of return and risk, it surely follows that there will also be more attention paid to the free structure of the service providers in the funds management and advising business," he said.