Most retirement software treats your plan like a report. You build it and you read it. When life changes, you go back into the inputs, find the right field, rerun the plan and work out what moved.

EVA, Optiml's built-in AI assistant, has made the reading part easier. Ask why your plan does something and you get an answer based on your own numbers.

But understanding your plan is only half the job. The other half is changing it, and testing a change before you commit to it.

EVA 2.0 launched on Thursday, October 15. The shift fits in one line: EVA goes from answering questions about your plan to changing and testing it with you, in plain language.

Ask why your plan draws from your RRSP (Registered Retirement Savings Plan). See what happens if you retire a year later. Update your growth rate. Line up five saved plans side by side. You do all of it in the same chat, and nothing in your plan changes until you say so.

Four Modes, One Chat

EVA answers from your own plan data, not general rules of thumb. It's powered by Gemini, and EVA 2.0 groups everything it does into four modes. You switch between them with a chip in the message bar:

• Conversation: "Ask questions and explore your plan."
• Compare: "Compare plans and analyze differences."
• What-if: "Build a what-if plan to test a scenario against your current plan."
• Inputs: "Update plan inputs."

You don't have to pick the right mode first. EVA works out which mode a question belongs in. Then it either moves the chat there itself or offers to switch.

Conversation is on every Optiml plan, Essentials included. Compare, What-if and Inputs come with Pro+ and Legacy. There are no usage caps. The full breakdown is at the end of this post.

Conversation: Answers From Your Plan, Not a Rule of Thumb

Conversation is where most members will start. Every answer comes from your numbers, your accounts and your strategy. You can ask things like:

• Why is my plan drawing from my RRIF (Registered Retirement Income Fund)?
• What's driving my estate value?
• "Explain the strategy I ran and what it does."
• "Summarize my plan."

EVA explains why your plan does what it does. It also links you straight to the right results page, so you can check the numbers for yourself. It works in English or French.

That alone is useful. But the bigger change in EVA 2.0 is what comes next: acting on what you've learned.

Inputs: Change Your Plan by Saying What Changed

Updating a plan used to mean knowing where every input lives. With Inputs, you describe the change in plain language and EVA proposes the edit.

The examples in this post come from the plan we used in our EVA 2.0 launch video. It's a modelled example, and every dollar figure is in future dollars at the end of the plan.

Start with a simple one. The member asks, "What are my investment growth rates?" EVA answers: 6%. Then the member types, "Please change my investment growth rates to 5%."

EVA doesn't make that change on its own. It proposes it on a card in the chat. The member clicks Continue, the change saves, and EVA offers Run new plan to update the results with the new rate.

Nothing saves until you confirm. If EVA proposes several changes at once, you'll see Confirm and save. If you change your mind, Cancel backs out and your plan stays as it was.

Here's what you can change in plain language:

• Retirement age and life expectancy
• Investment growth rates
• Salary and household expenses
• CPP (Canada Pension Plan) and OAS (Old Age Security) start age
• TFSA (Tax-Free Savings Account) room
• Debts
• Goals, such as a vacation, a renovation or a cottage
• Real estate, including selling your home and buying a future one
• Private equity

Inputs also handles single years of a year-by-year schedule, like a sabbatical year or one year of higher spending. You describe the year and EVA proposes the edit for that year.

If you ask about a change while you're in Conversation, EVA explains the manual steps and offers Edit my inputs in chat. You can do it either way.

What-if: See the Change Before You Make It

Inputs changes your plan. What-if shows you what a change would do before you make it.

When you ask a what-if question, EVA copies your current plan's inputs into a new what-if plan, applies the change and runs it. Your current plan stays unchanged until you launch the what-if plan.

The results are compared with your current plan on five numbers: pre-tax estate, estate taxes, after-tax estate, lifetime spending and lifetime taxes. EVA points out where "the what-if plan is better," and charts show the difference.

"What if I was to retire a year later?"

In the example plan, retirement is set for 2029. EVA moves it to 2030 and runs the plan. Nothing else changes. The after-tax estate comes out $243,228 higher, up 6.9%.

"What if I sold the home in 2033?"

This one needs more information, so EVA asks for it. After the sale, does the member buy another home or rent? EVA asks the member to "Enter the values needed to run this scenario." The member enters renting at $5,000 a month and EVA runs the plan. The after-tax estate comes out $280,800 lower.

One change raises the estate and the other lowers it. That's why you test. Until you run a decision against your own plan, you can't know which way it moves the numbers, or by how much.

If a what-if is the plan you want, Make this your plan (or Launch this plan) saves it as a new plan. It also runs the new plan through the Core 6, the six historical market eras Optiml tests every new plan against, and then opens it. If you don't launch it, your current plan stays exactly as you left it.

What-ifs also cover deposits and withdrawals. That leads to the most useful example of the four.

From "Why?" to "What If?" in One Chat

In this example, two modes work together.

In Conversation, the member asks: "Why am I not maxing out my TFSA every year?"

EVA answers from the plan. The plan uses the Maximize After-tax Estate strategy. That strategy sets TFSA contributions from the money left over each year, rather than forcing a maximum contribution every year.

That answers the question. But it raises the obvious next one: what if I maxed it out anyway?

So the member asks, "Please max out my TFSA every year." That's a what-if, so EVA moves the chat into What-if mode, builds the plan and runs it. The after-tax estate comes out $47,032 lower, down 1%. Lifetime spending doesn't change.

In this plan, the strategy's approach comes out ahead, and the member can see why and by how much. One question led to an explanation, and the explanation led to a test.

Compare: Up to Five Plans, Side by Side

Compare used to take two plans. EVA 2.0 takes 2 to 5 saved plans.

Pick your plans and click Compare. Key numbers at a glance shows the gaps between them. EVA starts with the biggest differences, and then you ask follow-ups in plain language, like "Which plan has lower lifetime taxes?"

Imagine you've saved three versions of your retirement: retiring at 63, retiring at 65, and retiring at 65 and selling the cottage five years later. You don't have to flip between results pages. You put all three in one view and ask EVA what separates them.

The Everyday Upgrades

A few smaller changes make EVA easier to use day to day:

• A conversation sidebar. Start a New conversation, search your past chats, rename them and pin the ones you come back to. Compare chats are kept separately.
• Ask EVA buttons on results pages. Start a question from the page you're already on.
• Copy a response. Save an answer to your notes or share it with your spouse.

Who Gets What

Conversation comes with every plan. The other three modes come with Pro+ and Legacy, and they work from a saved plan that has been run. Legacy, the plan built for incorporated Canadians, adds Inputs edits to trusts, holding companies (HoldCos) and operating companies (OpCos).

The Bottom Line

A retirement plan proves its worth when something changes: a later retirement date, a home you might sell, a contribution you're not sure about. We built EVA 2.0 for exactly those moments.

Ask why your plan does what it does. Test a change before you make it. Save it when you're sure, and not before.

EVA 2.0 is live as of Thursday, October 15.

Your plan isn't a report anymore. It's a conversation.