laia, retirement planning on autopilot

Most people in Germany know they should be saving privately for retirement, but very few feel on track. 95% recognize the need for private pension provision, yet only 5% feel they are doing it right, and 68% find pension products so complicated that they give up before they even start. The barrier is not awareness; it is complexity. The result is inaction, people postpone a decision that compounds heavily over time. Women are affected most acutely, retiring with pensions around 30% lower than men's and invested in capital markets at roughly half the rate. laia is built for everyone left on the sidelines by today's financial products, and for women in particular, who are systematically underserved by male-skewed neobrokers and traditional advisors alike.

laia closes this gap. It is an AI-native app that tells you how much you need to save for retirement and takes care of the rest: it shows you where you stand and how large your pension gap is, builds a personalized plan to close it, and lets you either follow the plan yourself or have laia execute it automatically on autopilot.

Behind the simple experience, laia builds a picture of each user's financial life from simple questions about their situation, and analyzes their personal pension outlook: what they are projected to have in retirement, and how large their gap is going to be. From there, it turns that analysis into action, recommending how much to contribute and allocating it across the right products: the new state-subsidized Altersvorsorgedepot (AV-Depot) and ETF portfolios for flexible, return-oriented wealth-building.

At the core is a proprietary recommendation and allocation engine that translates a person's life situation into the right contributions and the right product mix through to retirement, factors in subsidies and tax advantages, and adapts the plan dynamically as life changes. This makes professional-grade pension advice digital, affordable, and accessible to everyone, positioned one level above neobrokers, competing with the financial advisor most people cannot afford or do not want to hire, rather than with self-directed trading apps.

laia is built by a two-person founding team combining regulated-finance depth with consumer-fintech product experience, and is currently supported by the Berliner Startup Stipendium at HTW Berlin.