Half of a record $148B of Q2 net new assets came through the workplace door. MaxiFi is the deterministic engine that computes each participant's lifetime plan — Social Security, federal and state taxes, Roth sequencing, withdrawal order — correctly, by construction, from the stock-plan account forward. The conversion your flywheel runs on, at machine speed, with math no rival wirehouse can substantiate — and a bounded Accuracy Guarantee no rival can offer.
The growth case →Request the briefingWorkplace-to-wealth is the stated strategy, and it just set a record. Shareworks is opening to AI agents; wealth leadership is promising agents that act. Every one of those agents converges on the question participants are aging into — what should I actually do? — and today every answer in the industry is an estimate. The gap between an estimated answer and a computed one, at ~100M-relationship scale, is the growth line this brief prices.
UBS says personalized. Merrill says goals-based. Schwab and Fidelity say smart. None can substantiate the claim that matters — and 16,000 advisors selling plans on the same rented Monte Carlo as every rival is parity, not edge. MaxiFi can substantiate it: a deterministic engine that solves the lifetime plan for a household's facts and assumptions — every dollar of taxes and Social Security computed under current law, the same inputs producing the 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.
Every stock-plan participant gets a computed lifetime answer at the moment of vesting — the strongest “stay with Morgan Stanley” argument a participant has ever been handed.
The only advisor corps in America whose plans are provably computed — recruiting, retention, and the HNW pitch on substantiated ground.
The shopping-list item, solved: the full federal and state code inside every plan, exam-defensible by construction.
Households leave platforms; they don't leave the firm that stands behind their plan with a guarantee.
| UBS / Merrill | Schwab / Fidelity | Morgan Stanley + MaxiFi | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The advice claim | “Personalized” | “Smart / guidance” | “Provably correct” — substantiated |
| Behind the claim | Rented Monte Carlo | Heuristics + Monte Carlo | Deterministic optimization, 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 claim in the workplace funnel — vesting-moment plans, advisor pilots, the guarantee — answers what no forecast can. Owning MaxiFi is the exclusive right to run that play, and to deny it to UBS, Merrill, Schwab, and Fidelity 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 coming agents call the engine instead of guessing. Deterministic, auditable outputs — exam-defensible by construction — and the conversation stays Morgan Stanley's. No bolt-on layer: the correctness lives under the surfaces you already ship, and the guarantee ships with it.
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, no safe harbor for novel technology. As agents reach Shareworks and the advisor desktop, MaxiFi converts scaled planning answers from an examination liability into an examination exhibit: computed, verifiable, reproducible.
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 the households the workplace door reaches first. We are running a deliberately narrow process to place it where it converts the most real employees into advised households — and no funnel converts more of them 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.