Abacus Life, a publicly traded alternative asset originator and manager that specializes in life insurance products, has rebranded its technology division from LMA Technologies to ABL Tech, and expanded its capabilities. The division will also make its mortality verification and lifespan data available to its nascent wealth unit for the first time.
Late last year, Abacus launched a wealth management division, ABL Wealth, with the support of Dynasty Financial Partners. The firm plans to seed that offering by acquiring and rolling up RIAs under the ABL Wealth brand. It will provide those advisors with leads from both the inquiries the company receives and cash payouts from its life settlements business.
The wealth unit targets clients who have accessed 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 into custom portfolios. It also provides 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 the wealth division in several ways. Jackson said the firm’s advisors will have access to its mortality verification technology (called DeathTrac), which tracks when and where deaths occur every day. Through LMA, the firm has been aggregating mortality data for several years, primarily to help Abacus improve its underwriting of life insurance policies.
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 U.S. every day, Jackson said.
“What people don’t align with that is the transfer of wealth that occurs in any given year due to an unfortunate event occurring, like someone passing away,” he said. “It also creates, I think, an opportunity for someone to say, ‘OK, we know a mortality event occurred. Here’s who inherited that wealth, and here’s how much they potentially inherited.’ I think that’s really valuable data to help assist with wealth planning, on top of now incorporating lifespan into financial planning.”
The firm has been working on how to make its mortality data more accessible to financial advisors so that they can have those conversations before the wealth transfer occurs.
“Even if they haven’t, we can help them identify when that wealth transfer did occur because there’s a lot of financial planners out there that may not be aware that this is happening,” Jackson said. “Now we’re able to start to monetize that data. And as we’re working with and we’re partnering 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 own in-house advisors. The next phase will be to sell it externally.
In addition to mortality verification, ABL Tech will also provide the Abacus Marketplace, a multi-platform portal advisors can use to quickly identify the net present value of their client’s life insurance policy. It’s powered by an AI-backed calculator for valuing the policy, but it 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 single sign-on, and allows advisors to see all their cases in one place. Abacus manages all the back-end compliance.
ABL Tech has also partnered with BlockCerts to introduce Abacus Blockchain, which allows for the digital transaction of a life insurance policy over the blockchain.
Abacus Life went public in July via a Special Purpose Acquisition Company, merging with East Resources Acquisition Company. It now trades on the NASDAQ under the symbols “ABL” and “ABLLW.” The company purchases life insurance policies from consumers for cash.
