Innovation in RetiretechTM
Shaping the Future of the Industry
Background
In late 2020, we introduced “Reimagining Retirement in a Post-COVID World,” a series of events that highlighted the rapid technological adoption by carriers, distributors, and clients, catapulting them five to ten years ahead. This swift advancement has driven organizations to reevaluate their strategies, investment priorities, and partnerships to succeed in this dynamic environment. From these events, we identified over 100 companies poised to transform the industry for the next decade. Since our initial launch, we have convened over 1,500 industry leaders and innovative companies at Retiretech Forums nationwide to share insights and expertise on the significant changes as we continue to reimagine retirement.
Sectors
We have categorized these innovative companies into eleven sectors, reflecting the intersection of target customers—millennials, employees, boomers—and the specific challenges they address, such as savings, planning, and advice through planners, agents, or institutions.
Savings For Millennials
Millennials are burdened with debt, including college loans and credit card debt. Several startups are emerging to tackle the savings shortfall, which will be crucial for their future retirement planning. Retirement plan providers, financial institutions, and insurance carriers must integrate with these new partners to succeed.
Financial Planning For Millennials
A small fraction of millennials, benefiting from high-paying jobs, startup success, or inheritances, have started financial planning. Innovative companies are creating native digital experiences to deliver advice and foster long-term financial stability.
Savings For Employees
Employers seek a financially stable workforce. Startups are helping employees alter spending habits, budget effectively, and save more, contributing to overall financial well-being.
Retirement Planning For Employees
Workplace savings, primarily through 401(k) and other defined contribution plans, have increased significantly due to automatic enrollment. However, account balances need to grow to ensure stable retirements. Companies are emerging to enhance retirement planning within the ERISA framework.
Retirement Planning For Boomers
Boomers’ comfort with technology has surged, leading to the rise of digital-first platforms offering advice, savings reallocation, and retirement product purchases.
Customer Creation For Advisors
Agents and advisors desire more clients. Startups in this sector, beyond being mere lead generators, are connecting educated consumers with well-matched advisors, fostering new client relationships.
Planning Tools For Advisors
Advanced planning tools, introduced 10-15 years ago, brought institutional capabilities to individual investors. Today’s tools use advanced algorithms integrated with trading platforms, promising real-time planning linked to portfolio activities.
D2C Annuities
Online term life providers revolutionized insurance sales. Similarly, startups are beginning to succeed in the D2C (Direct to Consumer) annuity market with simple, consumer-friendly annuity products.
Product Selectors
The internet enhances transparency. Startups organizing, rating, and recommending products will add significant value for agents, advisors, and consumers, redefining user experience and purchase decision factors.
Compliance/risk Managements
Institutions, agents, advisors, and customers face diverse risks, including market volatility, health issues, geopolitical turmoil, and cybersecurity threats. Startups are developing platforms for real-time risk assessment and integration with trading platforms, bringing risk mitigation strategies to individual investors.
Institution Enablers
Retirement plan providers, financial institutions, and insurance carriers need support integrating with new partners, making real-time underwriting and pricing decisions, and reducing costs as margins compress.
Summary
Our list of over 100 companies is expected to grow, addressing the needs of millions of Americans for a more secure retirement. Solving this challenge requires innovative approaches to increasing savings rates, improving financial literacy, expanding accumulation options, and providing effective decumulation strategies.
Top 100 Retiretech Companies 2021
55ip
55ip is a financial technology company whose purpose is to break down barriers to financial progress. Financial advisors use 55ip’s tax-smart investment strategy engine to dramatically improve their efficiency and effectiveness. 55ip’s intuitive experience and intelligent automation elevate portfolio design and delivery, helping advisors save time and drive better outcomes for their clients.
Algoreg
Algoreg is a global RegTech, contributing to the digital transformation of businesses in compliance with regulatory requirements. With our proprietary solutions, we transform the way that banks, investment funds, payment companies or insurance firms are on-boarding their customers and conduct the KYC journey. Our products enable a fast and compliant onboarding, decrease operational KYC and reduce negative impacts on customers.
Annuities Genius
Annuities Genius offers everything you can possibly need to present, choose and sell annuities in one place at your fingertips.
Annuity Advantage
Annuity Advantage provides a comprehensive platform for comparing different types of annuities, helping individuals and advisors make informed decisions about annuity investments. The service offers free quotes and detailed, personalized analyses of annuity contracts to optimize retirement income planning.
Annuity educator
Born to reveal the hidden annuity gems from the nation’s top companies. Visit website.
Annuity Rate Watch
Annuity Rate Watch is an Industry Leading Annuity Software For Financial Professionals and Distributors.
Blueprint Income
With Blueprint Income, you have the option of signing up for a Personal Pension or buying a traditional annuity. With either, you get guaranteed retirement income you can count on for life.
CANNEX
CANNEX is the premier provider of data, research and quantitative analysis for retirement savings and income products in North America. Their mission is to provide access and transparency to the pricing and features of annuity, bank and investment products that consumers rely on for retirement security.
Canvas Annuity
Canvas Annuity allows for a simple way to fund your retirement with a fixed annuity. Their Motto: People-first annuities. Great rates. Flexible access. Zero commissions.
Carefull
Carefull is a financial management platform designed to protect older adults from financial risks. The service monitors bank accounts, credit cards, and other financial activity to detect signs of fraud, late payments, and mistakes. Carefull provides alerts and actionable insights to both seniors and their trusted family members or caregivers, ensuring financial safety and peace of mind.
Catch
Catch handles all of it so you don’t have to. Whether you work for yourself or have a few side gigs, you still need tax withholding, time off, retirement, and health insurance. Catch can help you get squared away. Choose your benefits, link your bank, then set aside a percentage of each paycheck. It’s that simple.
Clearnomics
Clearnomics provides a technology that empowers financial advisors to have engaging market conversations with clients.
ClientPoint
ClientPoint is a cloud-based platform designed to generate, manage and track sales proposals. The platform ties all SaaS together to give businesses a way to easily build custom client portals, or ClientPoints, so that they can: engage prospects more dynamically to close more deals faster; (2) successfully onboard customers better, and build stronger and more profitable relationships with them over time.
Comply
Comply provides comprehensive compliance solutions tailored for the financial services industry, now enhanced by the integration of ComplySci and RIA in a Box. The platform offers a suite of tools designed to streamline regulatory compliance, including automated workflows, real-time monitoring, and detailed reporting. By leveraging advanced technology, Comply helps firms manage compliance risks efficiently, ensuring they stay up-to-date with evolving regulatory requirements.
Covr
Covr’s digital, white-labeled platforms integrate seamlessly with financial brands to provide life, long-term care, disability, and supplemental health solutions from top carriers to their clients in a simple, turnkey way. Our AI-driven tools, digital advice model and omnichannel sales support seamlessly blend high-tech and high-touch. We’re dedicated to transforming the insurance purchase process from something that was previously slow and paper-based to an experience that is fast and digital.
Employment Hero PensionSync
PensionSync Employment Hero’s PensionSync tool is a solution that automates the delivery of data between payroll, AE middleware and pension providers. ThePensionSync tool is at the heart of automatic enrollment connecting payroll and pensions.
Ensight
EnsightTM provides SaaS-based sales acceleration solutions that make selling life insurance, LTC and annuities simpler, more profitable & a modern digital experience. The EnsightTM sales enablement platform helps insurance carriers, national distributors, BGAs and financial professionals drive sales growth, improve sales productivity, and transform the advisor-client experience at the point of sale.
Ethos Life
Ethos Life is an online platform that simplifies the process of purchasing life insurance, including term life, whole life, and critical illness insurance. It offers an easy-to-use digital interface for applying and obtaining policies quickly, often without the need for medical exams. Ethos uses data and technology to provide personalized coverage options and competitive pricing. The company’s mission is to make life insurance accessible, affordable, and straightforward for everyone.
EverSafe
EverSafe is a platform dedicated to protecting seniors from financial fraud and identity theft. By continuously monitoring financial accounts, credit reports, and real estate records, EverSafe detects suspicious activity and alerts users and their trusted advocates. The service offers tailored solutions to safeguard assets, providing peace of mind for seniors and their families.
EvoShare
EvoShare is the only solution turning American workers’_ spending into automatic retirement savings. For a long time, employees have only had one source of money for their 401(k) or 403(b) plan; their paycheck. With EvoShare, employees have access to an entirely new source of money to grow their retirement savings; their spending.
Facet Wealth
Facet is a provider of financial and wealth management services used to simplify the financial planning process. Its services include portfolio management, comprehensive full financial life planning, and personalized goal planning from a dedicated Certified Financial Planner (CFP) on a subscription-based model that enables customers toincrease their financial security and prosperity at an affordable cost.
Fenris Digital
Fenris enables streamlined customer acquisition and full lifecycle optimization. Clients (agencies, carriers, financial services providers) leverage their APIs to inject insights and data into their workflows, to increase conversions, and deliver killer Amazon- like customer journeys.
Fiduciary genius
An automated step-by-step flow to compose a customized retirement plan report for your customer. Real financial math made simple. Visit website.
Fintech Open Source Foundation
The Fintech Open Source Foundation is an independent nonprofit organization focused on promoting open innovation during a period of unprecedented technological transformation within financial services. FINOS believes that organizations that embrace open source software development and common standards will be best positioned to capture the growth opportunities presented by this transformation.
Gainbridge SPIA
The Gainbridge SPIA (Single-Premium Immediate Annuity) is a financial planning tool designed to convert an initial investment into a stable stream of fixed monthly payouts over a specified investment period.
Gerry
Gerry is a concierge service provider, helping families find the right assisted living homes for elders. The company provides its services related to assisted home living, financial planning, memory care facilities, family support, and communication, providing families with personalized recommendations and advice to find a suitable facility for their loved ones.
Halo Investing
Halo Investing is the first multi-issuer technology platform for protective investment solutions. Halo has created a two-sided marketplace connecting advisors and investors to protective investment products offered by leading global financial institutions.
Harness Wealth
Harness Wealth is a platform that connects clients to vetted financial advisory firms that provide a wide range of tailored financial services.
Hexure
Hexure offers innovative sales and regulatory automation solutions. We automate and modernize the entire sales process for advisors, agents and their customers, advancing the way insurance, retirement and investment products are marketed, sold, bought, delivered and managed. From pre-sale functions through e-application, to post-sale services, our suite of integrated sales tools and components make the sales and buying experience intuitive, fast and mobile.
Human Interest
Human Interest provides easy and affordable 401(k) retirement plans for small and medium-sized businesses, helping employers offer competitive benefits to attract and retain employees. Their platform simplifies the setup, enrollment, and management of retirement savings plans, making it easier for businesses to help their employees save for the future.
iCapital
iCapital provides structured investment and annuity solutions designed for financial advisors, offering pre-sale, point-of-sale, and post-trade analytical tools. These tools enable advisors to focus on their clients while optimizing investment strategies and managing complex financial products effectively.
Icon Retirement
Icon Retirement savings built for the 21st century. It’s the first portable, universally accessible, workplace savings plan. Built for the modern workforce, our proprietary technology delivers simple, fast, radically less expensive alternative to 401k plans.
Income Discovery
Income Discovery is a value-added planning tool built to help advisors provide better answers to difficult questions from clients either contemplating retirement or currently in retirement. A proven white label tech platform for retirement decumulation to deliver a Full & Rich Retirement to millions.
Income Solutions
Hueler Companies launched the groundbreaking Income Solutions platform, a web-based lifetime income annuity purchase system. Income Solutions Platform is a lifetime income annuity marketplace with simple, streamlined tools that can help you turn savings into a paycheck for life or an income stream you won’t outlive.
IncomeConductor
IncomeConductor® is a proprietary, cloud-based tool that allows advisors, firms and individuals to create customized, time-segmented income plans that can be easily tracked and managed throughout retirement.
InsureLife.io
InsureLife.io provides an AI-powered Network Orchestration Platform for Insurers that digitally connects their financial services products with consumers and agents, so they interact anytime, growing sales in a contactless world by creating an “in the moment” buying experience for connected consumers.
Intellagents
Intellagents Intellagents (now a FatBrain AI company) is the only no-code, hybrid cloud, independent insurance integration platform, connecting agents, insurers, and new digital marketplaces and ecosystems with best-in-class insurtech solutions, data, and AI provider, Core and legacy systems to power “Real Change” in the insurance industry.
InterGen Data
InterGen Data develops proprietary “AI/ML” Artificial Intelligence-based Machine Learning algorithms that help banks, financial services, and insurance companies predict and identify when their clients are likely to have an important Life Event occur, what it could be, and how much of a financial impact that it could make.
iPipeline
iPipeline provides cloud-based software solutions for the life insurance and financial services industry. Through SaaS solutions, we accelerate and simplify insurance sales, compliance, operations, and support. We provide process automation and seamless integration between every participant in the life insurance industry including carriers, agents, distributors and consumers.
JourneyGuide
JourneyGuide allows you to interactively work with your clients’ and provide answers to their most important retirement questions in seconds, not days. Together, you can chart a course to, and through, retirement. Proprietary algorithms based on years research allow for speed while at the same time support the rigor necessary to provide results that advisors and clients can be confident in.
Kidbrook
By distilling decades of research in the fields of quantitative analysis, behavioral economics and portfolio management into easily accessible APIs, Kidbrooke enables the FinTechs and financial institutions to build the next-generation digital wealth experiences. They provide B2B automated financial analytics designed to lower the cost of providing wealth management services without compromising on performance scalability.
Life Legacy
Life Legacy is transforming estate planning by making it simple, affordable, and accessible. In just 15 minutes, you can secure your future and protect the people and causes that matter most—because everyone deserves a plan. Your life. Your legacy.
LifeYield
LifeYield’s software takes a comprehensive view of investors’_ assets and provides simple tools to help improve their financial health. The company does so through the LifeYield Advantage SuiteTM of asset optimizing software programs including Portfolio Advantage, Social Security Advantage, and Income Advantage.
Longevity Card
Longevity Card is a banking application developer intended to help manage money
and health, together. Their application provides financial products, personalized health tips and recommendations from your personal AI longevity advisor, reward points that can be redeemed to buy products within the marketplace ecosystem, thereby enabling users to remain high functioning and financially stable throughout their lives.
Luma
Luma is an independent multi-issue platform that provides banks and brokers and dealers an order entry system. Its education and training system helps advisors maximize their sales and marketing efforts to provide the best purchasing options for their clients. Moreover, their post-sales support provides life cycle support to ensure that advisors and clients are maximizing their purchases.
Micruity
Micruity’s first of its kind platform enables frictionless annuity transactions, the portability of annuity products, and the building of annuity based funds.
NewRetirement
NewRetirement is an online retirement planning platform that caters to individuals preparing for retirement. They offer tools for financial planning, retirement calculators, and personalized advice to help users achieve their retirement goals. Unique to NewRetirement is their focus on comprehensive planning that integrates both financial and lifestyle considerations, aiming to provide a holistic approach to retirement readiness.
NextCapital
NextCapital’s Managed Advice platform provides retirement savers with personalized advice and a plan that grows with them, to and through retirement.
NICE Actimize
NICE Actimize is the largest and broadest provider of financial crime, risk and compliance solutions for regional and global financial institutions, as well
as government regulators. NICE Actimize experts apply innovative technology to protect institutions and safeguard consumers and investors assets by identifying financial crime, preventing fraud and providing regulatory compliance.
NOW: Pensions
NOW: Pensions has a clear mission: to help everyone save for a more financially secure future. This means achieving the best financial outcomes for their own members, while fighting for a fair pension system to enable all pension savers the ability to enjoy the retirement they deserve by highlighting pension inequalities and campaigning for change.
One@Work
One@Work offers an affordable on-demand pay product that allows employees to access their paychecks when they need it most—without confusing, hidden, or predatory fees. With a proven track record of reducing employee turnover and increasing retention and productivity, Even is the highest-rated on-demand pay app and has over 800,000 users nationwide.
Orion
Orion is dedicated to creating financial planning software that enables profitable financial planning for all of its customers. It has automated advice delivery that allows more advisors to participate in holistic advice and more clients to receive financial plans regardless of their net worth.
Penelope
Penelope is a retirement platform for small businesses, making 401(k) plans affordable and easy to manage. They use technology to automate plan administration and compliance, integrating with payroll providers for seamless operation. Penelope also provides a user-friendly experience, ensuring accessibility for businesses of all sizes.
Penfold
Penfold is the new way of doing Pensions. Managed entirely on mobile, it gives people complete transparency to track everything about their pension in real time. It myth-busts and explains pensions and retirement planning in the most simple way, and it helps you avoid building up loads of small pots every time you change jobs.
PensionBee
PensionBee combines all your old pensions into one new online plan. The application enables its users to create profiles including information on past and present pension and personal information. It allows them to track the pension progress and features a pension calculator to set retirement goals and add new contributions.
Profile Pensions
Profile Pensions’ mission is to help everyone in the UK better understand their pension(s), allowing them to be more informed and ultimately better off in retirement. They provide impartial, expert and ongoing pension advice. You don’t need to be financially savvy to be their customer. You don’t need to be ‘high net worth’. You don’t even need to know anything about your pension. All you need is to want to do something about your financial future. They can help with the rest. Now owned by Moneyfarm Group
Proformex
Proformex is the leading inforce management platform offering data aggregation, analytics, and portfolio monitoring for life insurance and annuities. The platform is purpose-built to help independent life insurance and advisory firms protect their clients’ best interest and ensure regulatory compliance by monitoring individual policy performance, identifying at-risk policies, and uncovering new sales opportunities.
PTO Exchange
PTO Exchange is a flexible benefits platform that allows employers to extend existing benefits to convert unused paid time off (PTO) into retirement contributions, student loan payments, emergency cash, or voluntary health insurance Advisor Tools.
Retirable
Retirable’s mission is to provide everyone with financial stability and lasting peace of mind through clear, approachable, professional advice. To start, they’re helping U.S. pre-retirees find their way to the futures they deserve.