Strategic Acquisition Brief · Confidential
MassMutual Private Wealth. The WMS–Orion platform. Virtual assistants on the path to autonomous agents. Each one must answer the same question — what should this household actually do? — and today, every answer in the industry is an estimate. MaxiFi computes it: verifiably, deterministically, backed by a thirty-year validation record — and, because the math is exact, backed by a bounded Accuracy Guarantee no competitor can underwrite.
The growth case →Request the briefing“Cautious about platform-centric, custom-built technology in the AI era.” Agreed — so don't buy a platform. MaxiFi is offered as an engine: a computational core your systems call through a modern API and agent interface. An engineering team could write a planning solver; what cannot be bought is thirty years of production hardening against the edge cases that break lifetime optimization, and the independent record proving this engine gets it right. “Integrating a standalone solution would be difficult and distracting.” You integrated Orion across 6,500+ professionals in a single announcement cycle. MaxiFi asks less: it slots beneath the planning workflows you already run — the engine inside, not a layer bolted on. Your advisors keep their tools. Your assistants gain a brain that never guesses.
Northwestern Mutual says planning-first. New York Life says trusted guidance. Guardian says holistic. None can substantiate the claim that matters — every one of them plans on the same rented heuristics and Monte Carlo. MaxiFi solves the lifetime plan for a household's facts and assumptions — every dollar of taxes and Social Security computed under current law, consumption-smoothed insurance 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 in the industry whose plans are provably computed and guaranteed — the recruiting pitch and the reason producers stay.
Sizing becomes science: optimal life and disability coverage computed from consumption smoothing, not income-replacement rules of thumb. Every plan surfaces a defensible protection need — premium growth on fiduciary-grade footing.
Social Security optimization, Roth strategy, withdrawal sequencing, spend-down design — computed to the dollar. The planning depth that wins HNW families, available to every advisor MassMutual Private Wealth serves.
Your assistants handle the conversation; MaxiFi handles the computation. Recommendations become auditable outputs of a deterministic engine — AI that can be trusted at scale, not merely supervised.
| Northwestern Mutual | NY Life / Guardian | MassMutual + MaxiFi | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The planning claim | “Planning-first” | “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 the advisor force — 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 Northwestern Mutual, New York Life, and Guardian 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 slots beneath the planning workflows you already run: advisors keep their tools, the assistants call the engine, every recommendation carries the audit trail and the guarantee's defined remedy. The integration ask is smaller than Orion was — a computational core, not a platform migration. Larry Kotlikoff stays on to integrate and as spokesperson.
Your virtual assistants are, by design, evolving toward autonomous agents — and generative models are extraordinary at language and unreliable at arithmetic over lifetimes. Consumption smoothing, survivor contingencies, tax-aware sequencing, insurance sizing: these are dynamic-programming problems, not text prediction. An agent that drafts is a productivity tool; an agent that recommends is a liability — unless the number it speaks comes from an engine that can prove its answer. MaxiFi converts that exposure into an 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.
We are deliberate about where MaxiFi lands: a mutual company answerable to policyowners is, in our view, the right home for an engine whose purpose is getting every household's plan verifiably right. That conviction is why this conversation is happening with MassMutual first — and why it remains open after April.
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.