Abacus Life Acquires Asset Manager FCF Advisors for $600M

Abacus Life, a publicly traded alternative asset manager specializing in life insurance products, has signed an agreement to acquire FCF Advisors, a New York-based asset manager with approximately $600 million in assets under management.

FCF, which changed its name from TrimTabs Asset Management in 2022, has five ETFs, three index strategies and separately managed accounts that use free cash flow as their primary stock selection criterion.

Dynasty Investment Bank acted as exclusive advisor to FCF on the transaction, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

This is Abacus Life’s second asset management acquisition in as many months. Last month, the company announced plans to acquire Carlisle Management Company SCA, a Luxembourg-based alternative asset manager with about $2 billion in assets under management, for $200 million.

Both FCF and Carlisle will become part of Abacus Life’s wealth management division, ABL Wealth, and will provide investment strategies to advisors who ultimately join the platform.

Abacus Life launched ABL Wealth late last year with the backing of Dynasty Financial Partners. The firm plans to launch the offering by acquiring and consolidating RIAs under the ABL Wealth brand. It will provide those advisors with leads from both the inquiries the firm receives and the cash disbursements from its life settlement business.

Abacus Life CEO Jay Jackson said the firm has a strong pipeline of potential RIA acquisitions, but it wanted to get into investment management first. The FCF acquisition was another step toward building a financial planning model based on longevity and lifetime value.

“Free cash flow is profitable businesses, and if we’re building models based on longevity, we want to be able to invest in businesses that are profitable,” he said. “We know that over the long term, not only have they historically outperformed the market, but they tend to be lower volatility.”

In the second half of the year, Jackson plans to focus on the firm’s RIA acquisitions strategy.

“Our idea was to build the models, implement this program and this idea of using life span as part of financial planning and estate planning. At the same time, we were collaborating, talking and looking for investment advisors across the country who wanted to join this platform.”

In his opinion, advisors with experience in the insurance industry are particularly attractive.

“The core driver of Abacus is insurance management, in the sense that we use actuarial data and longevity data to buy life insurance policies,” he said. “Having financial advisors who have deep knowledge of life insurance is really beneficial and really accretive for us as a company because they may already be selling life insurance products or may be able to identify opportunities that we could potentially buy.”

Abacus Life receives about 10,000 inquiries a month from people who may not qualify to sell a policy but have other financial-services needs. Those leads are, on average, over 55 and have a net worth of $1 million, a differentiator for the company as it seeks to attract RIAs.

“So many times, financial advisors might be looking at selling their business as part of a rollup strategy and they’re kind of on their own,” Jackson said. “They’re not getting any additional resources to really grow their business, whereas we have thousands of inquiries a month that we can help them grow their business that aligns with what we want to establish within our own asset management funds.”