An AgeTech Collaborative™ from AARP startup participant, Nestimate is a software company that equips 401(k) plans and their advisory firms to make informed decisions about adopting annuity retirement income solutions. As a data aggregation and due diligence engine, the Nestimate platform gives plan fiduciaries the confidence to make responsible assessments quickly and implement solutions at scale.
Kelby Meyers, CEO and founder of Nestimate, spoke with us about the company, recent groundbreaking changes in the 401(k) plan retirement space, and the importance of factoring longevity into retirement solutions.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What is Nestimate all about?
We’re a B2B software-as-a-service company, and our core mission is to facilitate access to newer retirement income solutions through 401(k) plans. Our software analytics platform empowers fiduciaries, retirement plan advisors, consultants and even plan sponsors to prudently evaluate these newer retirement income solutions — annuities, in particular — and implement them in their plans.
How does the platform work?
Any advisor or consultant serving a 401(k) plan uses some sort of data provider or scoring system to analyze funds they might want to include in their plan. Fiduciaries are long accustomed to evaluating and monitoring more traditional funds, such as mutual funds. But there wasn’t really a way for them to evaluate, monitor and differentiate these newer annuity retirement income solutions.
Nestimate serves as a database and a single source of truth that these fiduciaries can turn to for information. Much like popular tax-preparation software, our platform actually guides users through the process of selecting which annuity products make sense for their particular 401(k) plan and participant base. That streamlines the process and allows them to do it at scale.
What are these newer retirement plans you referenced?
In 2019, Congress passed the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act, which is legislation that allows a safe harbor protection from a fiduciary perspective, when it comes to selecting an annuity insurer for a 401(k) plan. Previously, annuities typically sat outside of 401(k) plans, but the SECURE Act alleviated certain concerns and gave providers the confidence to start implementing annuities in their 401(k) plans.
So, when the SECURE Act passed, it was a major “green light” that sparked an enormous surge of innovation in the space, with a lot of different retirement-focused products coming out.
What was the catalyst for starting Nestimate?
After COVID-19, there was an explosion of direct-to-consumer insurance and wealth advice. I have a background in annuities, and I thought, “Hey — someone needs to adopt this model for annuities!” So I set out to create a direct-to-consumer annuities sales platform.
But in the wake of all the innovation that the SECURE Act made possible, I realized there was a different gap that needed to be filled. The SECURE Act made choosing annuity carriers safer, but fiduciaries still needed a way to evaluate particular annuity products. That’s when I pivoted to a B2B model — helping fiduciaries become prudent experts in choosing which “flavor” of annuity is best for their plans and their customers.
What inspired you to become part of the AgeTech Collaborative?
When it comes to retirement, many people start early, and maybe they feel like they have a lot of money put away. But often, they don’t start considering how they’ll actually turn that nest egg into an income stream until they’re around 50 or 55. They’ll have a conversation with their advisor and ask, “What’s the actual monthly income that I’ll receive, and will it cover my expenses in retirement?” They also start to consider longevity: Will their nest egg last if they live to be 80 or 85? That’s where an annuity can shine by becoming a part of a thoughtful plan for allocating a person’s portfolio. So we’re really geared toward serving people who are 50-plus.
What are some challenges you’ve faced that you’ve had to overcome?
We work in the retirement and insurance space, which are largely legacy businesses that don’t often make decisions quickly. So the pace of change is slow compared to the pace we want to run. We’re like a little Jet Ski zipping around these big cruise ships, which are going to turn much more slowly. That’s been a really interesting hurdle.
What does the rest of 2025 have in store for Nestimate?
We’re rapidly expanding our product suite and have some fun new tools that we hope to launch soon. One of them is a risk analysis or retirement income score — a tool for advisors to identify which one of their 401(k) plans would benefit from adding a guaranteed income annuity. We run a complex actuarial and financial model on the back end and identify how much participants within a given 401(k) plan would be positively or negatively impacted by such a solution, and we can do that in 30–60 seconds. We’ve been really heads-down for a while now, and we’re excited to now be in a place where we can bring new things to market.
Want to learn more or connect with startups like Nestimate? If you’re already in the AgeTech Collaborative, log in to explore the ATC Directory and start a conversation. If not, join us today and tap into the power of purpose-driven innovation in AgeTech.
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