Nestimate and Nuveen Partner to Deliver Objective Target-Date Fund Evaluation Tool to Retirement Industry

Retirement plan advisors can now access Nestimate's Target-date Fund Fit Analysis at no cost through Nuveen, equipping fiduciaries with a powerful, plan-centric framework to evaluate investment menus and lifetime income solutions

LINCOLN, Neb.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nestimate, the innovative retirement plan due diligence platform, today announced a partnership with Nuveen, TIAA’s asset manager, to bring Nestimate's Target-date Fund Fit Analysis to retirement plan advisors nationwide. Through this collaboration, retirement plan advisors can reach out to Nuveen to receive free access to the Nestimate platform, enabling them to work directly with their plan sponsor clients to objectively evaluate retirement plan investment menus, including target-date funds with embedded guaranteed income solutions.

"Nuveen has always believed that every American deserves the opportunity to achieve retirement security, and that conviction is what drives our commitment to the advisor community," said Brendan McCarthy, Head of Nuveen Retirement Investing. "What Nestimate has built is what this industry needs right now: an objective, rigorous framework that allows advisors to evaluate target-date funds and lifetime income solutions on their merits, in the context of the specific plan they're serving. When advisors have tools like this, they can walk into a plan sponsor conversation with real confidence and real clarity. That's good for advisors, good for sponsors, and most importantly, good for participants."

The passage of the SECURE Act marked a turning point for the retirement plan industry, accelerating a shift from viewing retirement plans purely as savings vehicles toward recognizing them as true plans for retirement income. As lifetime income solutions have grown in prevalence, increasingly embedded within default investments like target-date funds, retirement plan advisors have faced a growing challenge: there was no single, objective, centralized framework to evaluate these products alongside traditional investment options.

Nestimate was built to solve that problem. The company's Target-date Fund Fit Analysis is a modern, agnostic target-date fund analyzer that allows advisors to evaluate target-date strategies, including those with new asset classes such as annuities, within a single, structured due diligence framework. The platform is designed to help advisors determine not only whether a lifetime income solution makes sense for a specific plan, but also which solution best aligns with the goals and demographics of that plan and its participants.

"At Nestimate, we believe lifetime income solutions have the potential to meaningfully improve retirement security for millions of participants, yet most participants still don't have access to them," said Kelby Meyers, Founder and CEO of Nestimate. "A significant part of that gap comes down to the fact that advisors haven't had the tools or the confidence to evaluate these products in a structured, defensible way. That's what we set out to change. Partnering with Nuveen, an organization whose commitment to retirement income security spans more than a century, means we can get these tools into the hands of far more advisors and, ultimately, make a real difference for participants."

How the Tool Works

The Target-date Fund Fit Analysis evaluates target-date fund options through multiple lenses, delivering a comprehensive, personalized assessment of how well each fund aligns with a plan's specific needs and participant demographics.

The platform generates three primary scores. The Qualitative Score measures suitability and how well each fund matches a plan's specific needs across five key criteria: Glide Path, Management Style, Return Need, Risk Tolerance, and Income Products.

The Quantitative Score is generated by Nestimate's proprietary algorithm, which evaluates target-date series by analyzing individual vintage years across performance metrics, risk metrics, risk-adjusted returns, and structural factors including assets under management, inflows, glide path alignment, and manager tenure. Critically, the score is then personalized to reflect the unique demographics and characteristics of the specific plan being evaluated, providing a tailored and insightful assessment rather than a one-size-fits-all ranking.

The Overall Score combines both assessments, weighting both the Qualitative and Quantitative scores.

The platform also generates a Retirement Income Score, or RIS(k), which assesses income adequacy for retirement on a scale of 0 to 100. The RIS(k) score utilizes participant demographics, including age, salary, account balance, and contribution rate, combined with economic assumptions and stochastic simulations that model thousands of potential retirement outcomes. This allows advisors to have meaningful, participant-centered conversations with plan sponsors grounded in data.

Retirement plan advisors interested in accessing Nestimate’s tools at no cost are encouraged to contact their Nuveen representative or reach out at [e-mail] or 888.842.5433.

About Nestimate

Nestimate is the first intuitive and objective analytics platform built to empower retirement income decisions at scale. Drawing on more than 100 years of combined experience in retirement income, defined contribution, and fiduciary process, Nestimate enables plan fiduciaries to confidently select, implement, and monitor guaranteed lifetime income solutions within defined contribution plans. Our mission to democratize access to income drives our commitment to making guaranteed income adoption simpler, smarter, and more accessible for advisors, plan sponsors, and employees alike. For more information, please visit www.mynestimate.com.

About Nuveen

Nuveen is a global investment leader, managing $1.4T in public and private assets for clients around the world. With broad expertise across income and alternatives, we invest in the growth of businesses, real estate, infrastructure, and natural capital, providing clients with the reliability, access, and foresight unique to our 125+ year heritage. Our prevailing perspective on the future drives our ambition to innovate and adapt our business to the changing needs of investors — all to pursue lasting performance for our clients, our communities, and our global economy. For more information, please visit www.nuveen.com.

Disclosures

This material is not intended to be a recommendation or investment advice, does not constitute a solicitation to buy, sell or hold a security or investment strategy and is not provided in a fiduciary capacity. The information provided does not take into account the specific objectives or circumstances of any particular investor, or suggest any specific course of action. Investment decisions should be made based on an investor’s objectives and circumstances and in consultation with their financial advisors. Financial professionals should independently evaluate the risks associated with products or services and exercise independent judgment with respect to their clients.

Important information on risk

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. All investments carry a certain degree of risk, including the possible loss of principal, and there is no assurance that an investment will provide positive performance over any period of time. Certain products and services may not be available to all entities or persons. There is no guarantee that investment objectives will be achieved. See the applicable product literature for details.

Nuveen, LLC provides investment solutions through its investment specialists.

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