Income Lab Launches Penny, an AI Financial Planning Assistant That Keeps Math Out of AI’s Hands

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For Immediate Release

Media Contact:
Aaron Browne-Moore, Head of Marketing
[email protected]

New assistant inside Income Lab Pro uses deterministic calculation engines for verifiable results across tax, Medicare, and estate planning.

APRIL 20, 2026 – Income Lab, the #1 rated retirement distribution planning tool for four consecutive years (T3/Inside Information 2026 Advisor Software Survey), today announced the launch of Penny, an AI financial planning assistant built into Income Lab Pro. Penny pairs deterministic calculation engines with an AI interface layer, giving financial advisors deep tactical analysis across taxes, Medicare, and estate planning without the hallucination risks inherent in large language model-generated math.

What Penny Does

Penny gives financial advisors sixteen structured tools inside Income Lab Pro, plus conversational chat that turns any tool into an open-ended follow-up. Together they open up dozens of discrete planning workflows at launch, each one turning a complex question into a specific, verifiable answer connected to the client’s actual plan data.

Initial tools span four planning areas:

• Tax Tools: Marginal Rate Explorer, Roth Conversion Analyzer, Tax Summary Report, W-4 Analyzer, NUA Analysis, and Tax Detail Tool.
• Medicare Tools: Medicare Roadmap, IRMAA Appeal Calculator, and ACA to Medicare Transition Planner.
• Estate Planning Tools: Inherited IRA Distribution Optimizer, Beneficiary Optimizer, Gift vs. Step-Up in Basis Comparison, and Charitable Giving Optimizer.
• Cross-Cutting Capabilities: Scenario Planner for comparing financial decisions side by side, Practice Intelligence for scanning an advisor’s entire book of business to surface planning opportunities, and Document Analysis for uploading tax returns without selecting a household first.

Additional planning areas, including Social Security, Retirement, and Investments, will roll out in subsequent updates.

How It Works: Deterministic AI

Penny separates the tasks AI is good at from those it is not. All financial calculations run through deterministic engines that produce the same result every time. AI handles classification, data extraction, and natural language explanation. This architecture makes hallucinated calculations structurally impossible for core tools.

A built-in Verify button provides on-demand audits of any AI response. Scenario comparisons can be checked against an external model used by the Congressional Budget Office, with per-number agreement and disagreement displayed.

“No one ever said, you know what’s terrible? Calculators,” said Justin Fitzpatrick, PhD, CFP, CLU, RICP, Co-founder of Income Lab. “We solved math a long time ago. And AI doesn’t make it any better. What AI does make better is the interface between advisors and the deep analysis they need.”

Fitzpatrick described the trust model behind Penny’s design:

“We think of it as a paraplanner. Paraplanners are amazing; they can do awesome work. Kind of like a paralegal. But if you had a complicated legal situation, you’d be happy to have a paralegal work on it, and then you’d probably want the senior partner to look over the work, too. Well, the advisor is the senior partner.”

Practice Intelligence: Planning Opportunities at Scale

Penny includes Practice Intelligence, a feature that scans an advisor’s entire client set to identify tax, Medicare, and estate planning opportunities that might otherwise go unnoticed.

“It’s the best practice consultant that ever walked the earth,” said Johnny Poulsen, CEO of Income Lab. “It finds the valuable planning conversations advisors should be having, across every household they work with, without the advisor needing to look for them.”

Market Position

Income Lab has held the #1 position in the retirement distribution planning category for four consecutive years in the T3/Inside Information Advisor Software Survey. In 2026, the platform also earned the highest rating of any Social Security tool in the industry (8.60/10) and was named a Software All-Star for the third time.

According to T3/Inside Information survey data from 2,906 advisors, demand for back-office AI efficiency is strong (7.72/10 average rating), while concern about client-facing AI remains high (4.37/10). Penny is designed for the first category: making advisors smarter and faster, not replacing their judgment.

Availability and Pricing

Penny is available now as part of Income Lab Pro at $299 per month (or $2990/year with an annual subscription). Income Lab Core, which does not include Penny, is available at $199 per month (or $1990 annually). Current Income Lab users can access Penny as a free tech preview through May 31, 2026.

To see Penny in action, advisors can book a walkthrough.

About Income Lab

Income Lab builds retirement planning and income distribution software for financial advisors. The platform combines guardrails-based spending capacity analysis, tax optimization, Social Security claiming strategies, and ongoing plan monitoring into a single tool. Rated #1 in its category for four consecutive years, Income Lab serves a growing base of advisory firms across the United States. For more information, visit incomelaboratory.com.

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