You asked and the Snap Projections team made it happen. We are thrilled to announce another major feature release: Monte Carlo simulation! We’ve also made significant improvements to randomized and historical Stress Testing.
What is Monte Carlo?
Monte Carlo analysis helps Advisors show clients a range of possible financial outcomes instead of relying on a single projection. Snap’s module runs a plan through 1,001 scenarios using different sequences of investment returns and other variables to estimate how often the client’s goals are successfully funded. This matters because real life rarely follows a smooth, predictable path—especially in retirement. Monte Carlo analysis can help clients understand the uncertainty in their plan, see how resilient it may be when conditions change, and make informed decisions while they still have time to adjust.
Why we created Monte Carlo
Financial plans are built around assumptions, but the future will not follow a single path.
Monte Carlo helps Advisors understand how a plan performs across a range of possible market outcomes. Not to predict the future, but to understand how resilient the plan is and what decisions may be needed if things don’t go as expected.
More importantly, Monte Carlo creates an opportunity to explore those decisions while the client still has choices. If a plan deteriorates in the future, the options available to the client may become more limited—and may require changes they would not be comfortable making.
By exploring different futures today, advisors can identify proactive changes the client would prefer to make now rather than waiting until circumstances force them to react.
It turns uncertainty into a practical planning conversation:
“What could happen, what choices would we have, and are there changes we’d rather make now while we still have more options?”
What users said about the need for Monte Carlo
Customer interviews showed strong demand for Monte Carlo, with several advisors already using other planning platforms or paying for additional software primarily because they offer it.
Advisors told us they want to:
- Communicate uncertainty: Show clients that there isn’t one guaranteed future.
- Assess resilience: Understand how often and when a plan may become vulnerable.
- Understand the downside: See not only how often plans fall short, but how significant the shortfall could be.
- Explore future choices: Understand what adjustments may be required if things don’t go as planned—and whether those are choices the client would be comfortable making.
- Identify proactive opportunities: Explore changes such as saving more, retiring later, or changing investment risk while the client still has flexibility.
- Have better client conversations: Use visuals to make probability, uncertainty, and trade-offs easier to understand.
Advisors consistently emphasized that Monte Carlo should support the conversation, not turn the client meeting into a statistics lesson.
Watch the Monte Carlo video and learn how it works
Key Advisor use cases for Monte Carlo
Assess Plan Resilience
See the probability that a plan succeeds across 1,000 possible market scenarios.
See When Risk Emerges
Use success-over-time to identify when a plan begins to deteriorate rather than relying only on the final success rate.
Understand Downside
See how the plan holds up across a range of market outcomes and how those outcomes affect the client’s goal achievement, financial assets, and estate over time.
Explore Choices Before They Become Constraints
Explore both proactive strategies the client can choose today and reactive strategies they may need to consider later if the plan doesn’t unfold as expected.
Test proactive changes such as:
- Saving more now
- Keeping a defined benefit pension plan instead of taking the commuted value
- Retiring later
- Changing investment risk
Test Reactive changes:
- Reducing spending
- Using home equity
- Downsizing their home
This allows advisors to determine whether the client’s future choices are acceptable or whether they would prefer to build more flexibility into the plan today.
Expand the Planning Conversation
Monte Carlo can surface decisions and trade-offs that may otherwise remain invisible until circumstances force them.
Rather than simply monitoring a plan and reacting when it falls off track, advisors can help clients understand their future choices and decide which changes, if any, they want to make proactively.
Explain Uncertainty
Use visual ranges and probability charts to help clients understand that a financial plan is not a prediction, it is a range of possible futures.
Try Monte Carlo and Stress Testing for free
Canadian Financial Advisors, Planners, and Investment Managers are eligible to start a 14-day Free Trial of Snap Projections financial planning software. Monte Carlo and Stress Testing is an optional paid add-on that is completely free during your trial period.
