Strategic Acquisition Brief · Confidential
Your own research says it: Americans trust advisors over AI. MaxiFi is that worldview made literal — the advisor owns the relationship, and a deterministic engine proves the math underneath: every dollar of taxes, Social Security, and protection need computed, auditable, and — because the math is exact — guaranteeable. The LearnVest playbook, with an engine that solves.
The growth case →Request the briefingThe defining technology deal in Northwestern Mutual's history was a planning-software acquisition — LearnVest, absorbed into the proprietary stack that became PX. It worked because planning is the hook that sells everything else. But PX plans on goals and cash flow, and every rival plans on the same rented heuristics and Monte Carlo. As AI enters the advisor conversation — and your 2025 study leads with trust in humans over machines — the firm that can put a provably computed, guaranteed plan in its advisors' hands owns the exact ground your brand already claims.
MassMutual says advisor intelligence. New York Life says trusted guidance. Guardian says holistic. None can substantiate the claim that matters. MaxiFi solves the lifetime plan for a household's facts and assumptions — consumption-smoothed protection sizing included — 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 only advisor force whose plans are provably computed and guaranteed — the recruiting pitch in a war for producers.
The plan is the hook that sells the protection. A substantiated accuracy claim at the moment of attach is pure margin — sizing from consumption smoothing, not rules of thumb.
Social Security optimization, Roth strategy, withdrawal sequencing, spend-down design — computed to the dollar, the depth that wins wealth clients.
Your trust research, productized: the advisor speaks; the engine proves; the guarantee stands behind both.
| MassMutual | NY Life / Guardian | Northwestern Mutual + MaxiFi | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The planning claim | “Advisor intelligence” | “Trusted guidance” | “Provably computed — and guaranteed” |
| Behind the claim | Rented planning software | Rented planning software | Owned deterministic engine, audit trail |
| Can rivals copy it? | The words, not the proof | The words, not the proof | Imitation = a false claim, policed by regulators |
One quarter of the engine under PX — computed plans, sized protection, the guarantee — answers what no forecast can. Owning MaxiFi is the exclusive right to run that play, and to deny it to every carrier that competes for your producers and your clients. 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 slots under the planning experience your advisors already run: PX keeps the interface and the relationship; the engine computes the plan and the protection need; the guarantee ships with both. The integration is a computational core, not a platform migration — smaller than the deal that built PX in the first place. Larry Kotlikoff stays on to integrate and as spokesperson.
As planning conversations become AI-assisted, supervision reaches the reliability and accuracy of the model behind the advice — and a mutual answerable to policyowners has the longest horizon on getting that right. MaxiFi converts scaled planning from a supervisory question into an exhibit: deterministic, auditable, with assumptions and law-table versions disclosed on every output.
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.
Larry built this over thirty years for exactly the households a mutual serves. We are running a deliberately narrow process to place it where the plan does the most good for the most real people — and no brand has staked more on planning than yours.
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.