New Delhi, May 10 -- Swarup Mohanty spent 15 years building what he thought was a solid retirement plan. Then he asked an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to stress-test it. He realized there were gaps.

The vice-chairman and chief executive officer of Mirae Asset Investment Managers (India), who manages one of the country's largest mutual fund houses, discovered through AI-driven simulations that his assumed 6% annual withdrawal rate from his retirement corpus could quietly erode his principal if equity markets stayed flat for just three consecutive years.

The math showed that in a range-bound market, withdrawals wouldn't be funded by returns-they'd start eating into the corpus itself.

"Even after spending 15 years planning retirement...