Abacus Life, a publicly traded alternative asset creator and manager specializing in life insurance products, has rebranded its technology division from LMA Technologies to ABL Tech and expanded its capabilities. The division will also make mortality and life expectancy data available to its fledgling wealth unit for the first time.
Late last year, Abacus opened a wealth management division, ABL Wealth, with support from Dynasty Financial Partners. signature plans to seed that bid acquiring and aggregating RIAs under the ABL Wealth brand. It will provide those advisers with guidance from both the inquiries the company receives and the cash payments from its life settlement business.
The wealth unit targets clients who have access to liquidity from their life insurance policies with financial planning and investment management services. Based in Orlando, Fla., the division helps clients invest policy proceeds or other assets in custom portfolios. It also offers retirement planning and risk management.
ABL Wealth currently has no advisors or assets, but Abacus Life President and CEO Jay Jackson said he expects to make an acquisition in the first half of this year.
ABL Tech will support wealth sharing in several ways. Jackson said the firm's advisers will have access to its mortality verification technology (called DeathTrac), which tracks when and where deaths occur on a daily basis. Through LMA, the firm has been collecting mortality data for several years, primarily to help Abacus improve life insurance underwriting.
Now, the idea is to put that data in the hands of financial advisors to help with wealth transfer. There are 8,000 deaths in the US every day, Jackson said.
“What people don't reconcile with that is the transfer of wealth that happens every year because of an unfortunate event that happens, like someone dying,” he said. “It also creates, I think, an opportunity for someone to say, 'OK, we know there's been a mortality event. Here's who inherited that wealth, and here's how much they potentially inherited.' I think this is really valuable data to help with estate planning, on the current inclusion of longevity in financial planning.”
The firm has been working on how to make its mortality data more accessible to financial advisers so they can have those conversations before the wealth transfer happens.
“Even if they haven't, we can help them identify when that wealth transfer happened, because there are a lot of financial planners out there who may not be aware that it's happening,” Jackson said. “Now we're able to start monetizing that data. And as we work and collaborate with financial advisors across the country, we think this is another useful source of data that they can use to help build and grow their practice.”
Jackson said the firm will initially offer these data capabilities to its in-house counsel. The next stage will be external sales.
In addition to mortality verification, ABL Tech will also provide Abacus Marketplace, a multi-platform portal that advisors can use to quickly identify the net present value of their client's life insurance policy. It's powered by an AI-powered calculator for policy evaluation, but also includes a tool for completing that transaction, from submitting the case file and tracking the status of a case to communicating with Abacus and clients about the case. The platform is a single sign-on and allows advisors to view all their cases in one place. Abacus manages all compliance on the back end.
ABL Tech has also partnered with BlockCerts to introduce Abacus Blockchain, which allows the digital transaction of a life insurance policy over the blockchain.
Abacus Life went public in July through a special-purpose buyout company, joining the East Resources Acquisition Company. It now trades on the NASDAQ under the symbols “ABL” and “ABLLW”. The company buys life insurance policies from consumers for cash.