Life Settlement Firm Aims to Get 30% of Revenue From Wealth Advisors by 2030

The Abacus life settlement business is already generating about 10,000 consumer leads per month, and access to those leads should create opportunities for wealth advisors to cross-sell other financial services, according to a slide deck the company posted for a conference call the company held to go over results for the first quarter with the analysts.

Abacus announced in March that it has agreed to pay about $53 million for a minority stake in Manning & Napier, a wealth and asset management firm with $18 billion in assets under management. The firm works with about 150 financial advisors and has 3,400 client relationships, or $5.3 million in cash per relationship.

Abacus CEO Jay Jackson said during the analyst call that growth in advisory services revenue could come from the Manning & Napier relationship and through relationships with other advisors.

"We're really excited about the pipeline for that," Jackson said.

He noted that advisors are talking about the wealth baby boomers will be transferring to heirs and beneficiaries.

"Wouldn't the world like to know when that's going to transfer?" Jackson asked. "You can know that better if you understand the longevity and lifespan data behind it."

Abacus streamed the call live on the web and posted a recording on its website.

What it means: The idea of selling unwanted life insurance policies to investors could soon become more central in the general financial advice market.

The earnings: Abacus reported $7.3 million in net income for the first quarter on $59 million in revenue, up from $5.4 million in net income on $44 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2025.

Alternative assets: Advisors have been more interested in talking to Abacus in recent quarters because of increased volatility in the markets for other types of assets, Jackson said during the analyst call.

"Investors are reassessing where they allocate capital," Jackson said. "They are moving toward assets that are genuinely uncorrelated from market sentiment and credit cycles. That is precisely what Abacus offers. Our yield is mortality-driven, not rates-driven. That means our returns are structurally uncorrelated."

In part because returns on longevity-related assets are not strongly correlated with most other investments, Abacus was able to return 100% of the investor capital invested in a longevity asset investment fund that matured during the quarter on time, Jackson said.

"Returning investor capital at the end of a fund's term should be the norm," he said. "Across the alternatives industry today, it is not. At a moment when restrictions on investor capital have been commonplace, when redemption gates have become accepted norms, Abacus did what we said we would do."

Policy values: The tables in the full quarterly report that Abacus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show how Abacus values the life insurance policies it buys and might help advisors and clients analyze the value of the clients' policies.

Abacus carried 656 policies at fair value at the end of March.

The average policy had a net death benefit of about $1.1 million, after taking considerations such as policy loans into account.

The policies had an average fair value, or current market value, of about $599,000, meaning that the average policy had a fair value 46% less than the net death benefit, due to factors such as the life expectancy of the individual insured by each policy.

The gap between the average fair value and the net death benefit was just 16% for policies covering people who appear to have less than one year to live and 66% for policies covering people who appear to be on track to live for at least six more years.

"Fair value" is an SEC measure that's comparable to the "fair market value" figure that the Internal Revenue Service uses but is calculated using different assumptions about the sales conditions.