Abacus Global Management is still helping life insurance companies buy back in-force life insurance policies.
Jay Jackson, the company's chairman and CEO, talked about the company's efforts to work with life insurers last week during a conference call with securities analysts.
He gave no policy acquisition numbers but described the 2024 program for life insurers as "successful."
"We anticipate a successful '25," Jackson said. "The carrier buyback program continues to expand."
What it means: Life insurers that want to reduce their exposure to certain types of life insurance policies have tried to buy policies back on their own.
Now, some insurers might try to buy back clients' life insurance policies by using life settlement firms to make the purchase offers.
The backdrop: Abacus is an Orlando, Florida-based alternative asset management and investment advisor with roots in the life settlement market, or the market for buying and selling in-force life insurance policies.
Abacus, which went public in 2022, held the conference call to go over earnings for the fourth quarter of 2024.
The company reported a $19 million net loss for the quarter on $33 million in revenue, compared with a $6.4 million net loss on $24 million in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2023.
Adjusted net income, which excludes the effects of non-cash stock-based compensation and some other items, increased to $13 million, from $5.9 million.
The number of policies acquired, or "originated," increased to 214, from 208 in the year-earlier quarter, and the amount of capital used to buy the policies increased to $97 million, from $68 million.
The company ended 2024 servicing 2,105 policies with $5.5 billion in death benefits, or about $2.6 million in death benefits per policy. That compares with 722 policies and $1.1 billion in death benefits, or $1.5 million in death benefits per policy, a year earlier.
Policy buybacks: Jackson said the Abacus policy buyback team is starting to work with reinsurers as well as with the insurers that issued the life insurance policies.
"These are very large entities," Jackson said. "We're working through a large relationship now."
An insurer's or reinsurer's policy purchase volume may vary widely from quarter to quarter, and the flow of cash used to buy the policies can be lumpy, he said.
Advertising: Abacus has been working to increase awareness of the life settlement market by advertising on television.
Abacus paused advertising in swing states around the November general election, to avoid the spike in air time prices caused by campaign advertising, and it shifted the advertising to non-swing states, he said.
"We're continuing our advertising campaign," Jackson said.
The ads appear to reach agents and advisors as well as the insureds, and spending on the ads has a clear relationship with the number of policies offered to Abacus, Jackson said.
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