Personal Capital gave Empower the picture. MaxiFi gives Empower the answer: the deterministic engine that computes each of 20 million investors' actual lifetime plan — correctly, by construction, at machine scale — with the substantiation plan sponsors procure on and a bounded Accuracy Guarantee no rival recordkeeper can offer.
The growth case →Request the briefingEmpower passed twenty million investors served this spring, added the Milliman retirement book in June, and has declared its trajectory: be the place those millions get advice, not just custody. Today that conversion runs on Monte Carlo estimates every rival also rents. The workplace-to-wealth flywheel — EPW's first $100B closed in October 2025 — is a conversion machine waiting for a conversion asset.
Fidelity says guidance. Schwab says intelligent. Vanguard says advice for all. None can substantiate “correct” — and for plan sponsors, consultants, and fiduciaries, substantiation is a procurement criterion, not a slogan. MaxiFi solves the lifetime plan for a household's facts and assumptions — every dollar of taxes and Social Security computed under current law, same inputs, same answer, every time, with an audit trail.
That changes what the claim is. Backed by the pedigree — thirty years of Laurence Kotlikoff's economics, taught with at MIT Sloan by Nobel laureate Robert Merton — and by the reproducible computations themselves, the accuracy claim stops being puffery and becomes a substantiated statement of fact. And determinism unlocks what a claim alone never could: a bounded Accuracy Guarantee with a defined remedy — the play that built TurboTax's franchise, never before available in planning, insurable only because the math is exact.
The substantiation regime that polices financial advertising — FINRA 2210's fair-and-not-misleading standard, FTC substantiation doctrine — protects this claim. Rivals can run vague accuracy language; what they cannot run is your claim: the specific, falsifiable, guaranteed one. Copying it without the engine is a false claim regulators, NAD panels, and Lanham Act suits will punish.
The computed, guaranteeable lifetime answer is the strongest EPW conversion asset ever put in front of a captive 20M-investor base.
Fiduciary cover, exam-defensible methodology, the checkbox no rival recordkeeper can tick — correctness as the reason Empower wins the plan.
Insurance sizing and drawdown computed from consumption smoothing — defensible attach across the Milliman book from day one.
Participants leave recordkeepers; households don't leave the platform that computes — and guarantees — their plan.
| Fidelity / Schwab | Vanguard | Empower + MaxiFi | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The advice claim | “Guidance / intelligent” | “Advice for all” | “Provably correct” — substantiated |
| Behind the claim | Monte Carlo tooling | Monte Carlo tooling | Deterministic optimization, audit trail |
| The sponsor's question | Trust us | Trust us | Audit it yourself — and the guarantee stands behind it |
One quarter of the claim in the participant funnel — conversion, sponsor RFPs, the guarantee — answers what no forecast can. Owning MaxiFi is the exclusive right to run that play, and to deny it to Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard permanently. It is a revenue line, not a legal reserve.
MaxiFi (Economic Security Planning, Inc.) uses consumption smoothing and dynamic programming to compute the single, mathematically optimal lifetime plan — solving simultaneously across Social Security strategy, federal and state taxes, Roth-conversion sequencing, withdrawal order, insurance sizing, and upside investing. For a household's facts and assumptions it solves — not guesses: same inputs, same answer, every time, with an audit trail.
Prof. Laurence Kotlikoff — William Fairfield Warren Professor at Boston University; Harvard Ph.D.; former Senior Economist, President's Council of Economic Advisers; named by The Economist among the 25 most influential economists.
Taught with at MIT Sloan by Nobel laureate Robert Merton as an “outstanding science-based lifecycle and retirement management platform” (Merton does not endorse products); featured in Bankrate's “Best financial planning software of 2025” roundup. The economics trace to Nobel-recognized lifecycle work.
Patented algorithms and thirty years of continuously maintained federal/state tax, Social Security, and benefit rules with a validation record — exactly the IP a language model cannot reverse-engineer and a build team cannot shortcut.
Larry Kotlikoff intends to stay on with the acquirer — to integrate the engine, validate the training and guarantee programs, and continue as spokesperson. The acquirer buys the engine and keeps the economist who built it.
MaxiFi computes each participant's lifetime plan from plan and payroll data; advisors review and own the relationship; the guarantee ships with the plan. The Personal Capital playbook, one layer deeper: buy the capability, make it the franchise layer. Larry Kotlikoff stays on to integrate and as spokesperson.
This is the first FINRA examination cycle to treat generative AI as a standalone topic — Rule 3110 supervision reaching the reliability and accuracy of the AI model, Reg Notice 24-09 reaching embedded third-party tools. Earning the trust of twenty million people means the answers have to be right — and provably so: MaxiFi converts scaled advice from an examination liability into an examination exhibit.
And the engine ships with the architecture that keeps the floor solid under an advertised claim: assumptions and law-table version disclosed on every output, customer input attestation, versioned rule tables with re-run notices on law changes, and the Accuracy Guarantee's defined remedy. The audit trail proves each customer was told exactly what was — and wasn't — promised.
We price the asset on the growth case above. The defense beneath it is a term of the deal, not the deal — and, like the claim itself, it is denied to every competitor the day it is yours.
A frontier model's retirement “smile” ran 13% too low in each of a real household's 40 remaining years against MaxiFi's computed path — dated, dollar-specific, reproducible.
Four frontier AIs sized the same father's coverage at $1.3M, $1.4M, and $3.8M — against MaxiFi's internally consistent $2.09M. Every shortcut the AIs used is programmable — and wrong.
One retirement question, three frontier engines, three different verdicts — with MIT's Andrew Lo noting these tools carry no best-interest duty. The category estimates; the divergence is the proof.
The tests publish to 145,000+ subscribers and counting — credibility no rival in the category can match, and it conveys with the acquisition.
Earning the trust of twenty million people means the answers have to be right. Larry held this engine for thirty years; we are running a deliberately narrow process to place it where it answers the most real households — and nobody holds more of them than Empower.
The next step: a 30-minute briefing — MaxiFi solves a real household's lifetime plan, live, while a frontier model is asked to match it. The gap is the thesis; the funnel is the price.
Michael Kane, Ph.D., J.D. · Managing Partner, Kane & Company · FINRA / SEC / SIPC–Registered Investment Bank
Commerce@kaneco.com · 310-441-5263 · Representing Economic Security Planning, Inc.