Strategic Acquisition Brief · Confidential
Edward Jones turned planning into a paid revenue line — flat-fee plans, 5,000+ CFPs, Generations for HNW families. But every paid plan is built on rented software shared with every rival. MaxiFi is the owned, deterministic engine that computes each household's plan — provably, auditable, guaranteeable — the only durable differentiation for a firm that now sells the plan itself.
The growth case →Request the briefingPlanning became a revenue line in 2024; Generations took it to HNW families in 2025; the branch network gives it reach no rival can match. And in February 2026 the dam broke on capability M&A — the Natixis overlay acquisition, the first tuck-in of the modern era. What remains rented is the most strategic layer of all: the planning software itself, licensed firmwide from a vendor that sells the same math to every competitor. A paid plan on commodity software is a fee waiting to be challenged. A paid plan on an owned, provable engine is a franchise.
Every competitor 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, same inputs, same answer, every time, with an audit trail — and, because the math is exact, a bounded Accuracy Guarantee can stand behind every paid plan.
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 financial plan in America that's provably computed — and guaranteed” — the answer to every fee conversation, in every branch.
Producers join and stay for tools no rival office can offer.
Social Security optimization, Roth sequencing, withdrawal design, estate-aware planning — computed to the dollar for HNW families.
The neighborly brand plus the provable number — trust as arithmetic, not just proximity.
| Rivals on rented software | Robo/digital planners | Edward Jones + MaxiFi | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The plan | Same vendor math as everyone | Estimates at scale | Owned, computed, guaranteed |
| The fee question | Why pay for commodity software? | Why pay at all? | Because it is provably right |
| Can rivals copy it? | They rent the same tools | The words, not the proof | One engine exists; imitation is a false claim |
One quarter of the engine under the paid-planning line — computed plans, the guarantee, the fee conversation — answers what no forecast can. Owning MaxiFi is the exclusive right to run that play, and to deny it to every firm your branches compete with. 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.
Advisors keep their process and their relationship; MaxiFi computes the plan underneath and stamps it with the audit trail and the guarantee's defined remedy. The Natixis playbook applied to the most strategic layer: buy the capability, deploy it across the network. Larry Kotlikoff stays on to integrate and as spokesperson.
Charging a fee for advice sharpens every regulatory question about what the advice is built on — and as AI enters the planning conversation, supervision reaches the reliability and accuracy of the model behind it. MaxiFi converts the paid plan from a supervisory question into an exhibit: deterministic, auditable, disclosed assumptions, versioned law tables.
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 on Main Street — the ones your branches serve. We are running a deliberately narrow process to place it where the plan reaches the most real families, and nobody reaches them the way Edward Jones does.
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.