Good morning, everybody. Thanks for coming. Rob Phillips, I'm with Abacus Global Management and really appreciate your being here. I'll get right to it. Abacus Global Management, we are the pioneering and the only public alternative asset manager specializing in lifespan investments and longevity data. What does that mean? Upshot is life settlements. As my Canadian wife says, everything in the U.S. is a business, and here in the U.S., life insurance is our personal asset. There's a 1911 Supreme Court case that decided that. Because of that, life insurance can be sold. Our core business is purchasing life insurance policies from individuals looking to sell them and ultimately placing those policies with institutional investors. Our core business is capturing the spread between the policies that we acquire and the placement with the institutional investors. Quick purpose or reason or investment value proposition.
If you do a screen for a public company, sub-$2.5 billion with revenue growth of 20% and margins of 50% or greater, you're going to wind up with one company, and that's us, and that's Abacus. The opportunity to invest with us is an allocation to a business where the market that we have in essence created, we continue to have a leadership position in. Our core business is a truly uncorrelated asset. Life insurance policies will pay out, and there's a 100% chance that there is going to be a payout of a life insurance policy for obvious reasons. The market is significant, and it's growing, and it has more institutional participation, which is a true tailwind from the standpoint of everywhere we look. Because of the market that continues to evolve, we have diversification opportunities, which I'm going to get to.
Although most of our business continues to be in the legacy life settlements, which is where I'm going to be spending most of my time talking about. Quick history of the company. Our founders, who are still showing up in the company every day, got together in the 1990s. They're all actuaries, and they began to pool their assets and purchase life insurance policies from individuals. Those policies, as a true uncorrelated high-return asset class, constituted an opportunity or a portfolio that they were sitting on. Key changes are insurance policies to an origination and market-making engine. As institutional funds continue to step into our market, as there's growing interest in life insurance policies as an uncorrelated asset, the real opportunity for us is the origination and the market-making opportunities. Fast forward to, as Jay, our CEO, likes to say, he's aged 10 years in the last two.
We went public on NASDAQ in 2023 by a SPAC. We did two equity raises in 2024, which is when I'd argue that we truly became public, and we did those at $8 a share. We raised a total of around $180 million. We also did a debt deal in December. Also, we acquired two companies in December that have begun to diversify our revenues, which I'm going to get to. The upshot of this in the core business is we've raised the capital, and now we're putting it to work, predominantly in our core business. In March of 2025, we rebranded ourselves from Abacus Life to Abacus Global Management in order to truly drive the point that we are an alternative and global asset manager in this space. Life settlements, what is it? It is, again, it's the acquisition of a life insurance policy from the individual insured.
When we acquire these policies, we will, for the time that we own them, service the premiums on those, and ultimately, whoever owns the policy is going to collect the full death benefit. By the way, I understand that this is a truly morbid topic that I'm talking about, but we talk about it in a dispassionate kind of way. Whoever ultimately owns the policy, mostly those are institutional investors who are running pools of life insurance policies, continue to service the premiums on those policies and collect the full death benefit. What does the individual who surrendered those policies get from us? When it boils down to it, we pay on average $0.201 on the face value dollar. The other thing, the key part of this, is life expectancy.
Anybody who's selling their life insurance policies for us, the real sweet spot is we think a seven-year life expectancy are in. These are individuals who are roughly around 75 years of age. They took down a life insurance policy, predominantly universal or whole, so they don't term out. They've taken care of business. In the intervening 30 years or so since they bought the life insurance policy, they've got a legacy, they've got a portfolio, they have an estate, and they have a life insurance policy where showing that the cash flow on the lower right there, they get expensive the older you become. Underwriters know this, by the way. 90% of the roughly $13 trillion of life insurance in the U.S. that's in effect terms out will never pay a claim.
Most individuals, the older they become, if you have a whole life insurance policy, will simply just stop paying. That is a prudent financial decision. By the way, if you have a $1 million life insurance policy and you are in your 70s, you can be looking at $5,000 a month in premiums. Simply lapsing that and putting yourself into the 90% category, which the underwriters know about, is a decision that saves you, in this example, roughly $60,000 a year. You could also surrender for the cash value that averages 4%-5% on the face value. In our instance, if you are willing to discuss the surrender of that policy as a licensed life settlement provider, in addition to the immediate savings and the permanent ones from no longer paying the premiums, we will offer a cash settlement for that.
When we cut down to it, in our sweet spot for 2024, it's roughly $250 billion of face value each year of life insurance that's either universal or whole with individuals who we think have around a seven-year life expectancy. Of that amount, right around $4.5 billion in 2024 is surrendered in the form of a life settlement, and that's face value as well. We're talking about capital deployed in the order of around $1 billion from our standpoint. If we simply move that needle on the $250 billion and go, say, from $4.5 billion- $5.5 billion or any incremental gain in that, then that's truly meaningful for our business. At the same time, what we're encountering on our market-making or asset management part of the business is growing institutional interests of funds that are being stood up specifically to allocate to life insurance policies.
Most of that is non-U.S., ironically, but in terms of the market, it's only U.S. mortalities where the life insurance policies can be sold. We're going from a market with $13 trillion face value, and we're getting to our sweet spot of $250 billion, of which $4.5 billion is what's being surrendered into the market. We're the largest component of that in terms of capital deployed in the purchasing as well. We're around 25% of this market. Life insurance or life settlements, by the way, is regulated in the U.S. and at the state level. Abacus is licensed in all 50 states to purchase life insurance policies from individuals. By and large, the governors and the insurance commissioners of each state like this product because it's very consumer-friendly.
It puts more power into the individual consumer because they're well aware in this business that, again, 90% of the premiums paid will simply lapse, and the insurance companies will collect that and move on. We're offering the opportunity to monetize through education what is, in fact, an asset that most individuals are viewing as an expense. What we're showing here, the proof is in the pudding when it comes to our performance as well. For our Q4, what I'm basically showing here is our core business we continued to execute on a growing market, and we did what we said we were going to do. We closed two acquisitions in December that were immediately impactful when it came to our earnings and our margins. We raised capital, and we deployed it. We've put it to work.
The key questions that we got, especially in November, raised when we came right back to the market after having raised in June, was, what are we doing with the capital we're raising? The answer is we're buying policies with it. Predominantly in the origination engine, more policies right in front of us that we can acquire and act on. What we're also encountering as this market continues to evolve and become more mature is the funds are looking for liquidity at the back end. If you have a fund that stood up and was a five-year fund and they've had their payouts, they may be liquidating and have a stub portfolio of, call it, 50 policies. They're coming back to us, and we're putting a bid on those and ultimately placing those with other investors.
We're seeing more liquidity opportunities in our core business. What we're depicting here between Q4 and I'll focus on 2024 is our core business continues to grow for us. We grow total revenue, organic revenue by 64%. Again, we made two acquisitions in December. Carlyle SCA, which is headquartered in Luxembourg, they're an asset manager that invests directly in life insurance policies, runs roughly $2 billion. We also bought an ETF provider, FCF Advisors, and of the $111.9 million, roughly $2.9 million was those companies in just one month. When it comes to the core life settlements business, we grew revenues by 64%. We've grown our EBITDA and our margins, which is how we truly gauge ourselves. In the bottom lines there, we're deploying the capital into the market. Between our equity and our debt raises, we have roughly a $500 million balance sheet.
From our standpoint and in the core business, that's equilibrium. It's roughly $125 million a quarter that we're deploying into the purchase of life insurance policies and the making of a market in those as well. Before I get to the diversification business, and now that I mentioned it too, that's our CEO. Those are the commercials that run all day on CNBC and Fox Business and Bloomberg and Newsmax, which is actually ours. That's the majority of our revenue at present. We also now own with Carlyle one of the institutional buyers of these policies. We're getting a lot of questions, by the way. Do we run the risk potentially of upsetting our other institutional customers for that? At the end of the day, the largest or the greatest bid is what wins the policy.
We are not putting, as a matter of practice, the highest bid in our own portfolio. It is no more so than any other proprietary ABS-like market-making operation out there because they all have proprietary destinations that can possibly fill it. What we are doing is de-risking the origination part of our business by having an end user while we are diversifying the revenue as well. In terms of the contribution, about $2.4 million of our $2.9 million of new revenue in December was Carlyle. That is a good way to model growing out. The key part of this is we are going to be growing the assets under management in that business from the current $2 billion. Of the $2 billion that we are running in that business, by the way, only 6% are U.S. allocators, which is ironic to us.
These are European, Middle Eastern, and Asian, predominantly sovereign or institutional investors, larger family offices who are allocating to US mortality, and less than 10% of the assets are US-based. That is a real opportunity for us as we continue to grow and diversify this business as well. Into the verticals. Life solutions, like I said, is the origination engine where we are out engaged with individuals or their wealth advisors in obtaining policies. We obtained roughly—yeah, go back here. We obtained 1,146 policies in 2024. Around 750 of those were what we call the secondary market. That is the initial surrendering of those life insurance policies to us. The balance is us making a market on behalf of the funds and in between them. Here is another really interesting growing part of our business.
The underwriters are becoming a larger part and a high-margin part of this business or their reinsurers. Transamerica has been very public about this part of the business. They made certain longevity and lapse assumptions with policies they underwrote 25 years to 30 years ago that haven't panned out for them. The insurance regulators are requiring them to take outsized reserves for certain very generous policies for them where the individuals haven't lapsed their policies and are still with us. If we are acquiring those policies in the ordinary course of our business, they're the natural buyer for them. We're talking, obviously, Transamerica with the very public, they've bought $3 billion of face value. They were a large part of our Q4 revenues for this. There were other underwriters and their reinsurers that were actively engaged with because Transamerica has proven this for them.
Now, why can't the underwriters go obtain these policies themselves? The quick answer is they can't. First of all, you can only get a life insurance policy in the secondary market as a licensed life settlement provider, and this makes sense. Underwriters cannot go adversely individually select their own portfolios. Lincoln Financial tried this. What they have to do is make the same offer to all of their clients in all of the age categories regardless of the policies. They called it an enhanced cash surrender, and frankly, it didn't get anywhere. The other question we get, by the way, is what about the funds? Why couldn't they go just engage in this business directly? They can. Some have tried it. One in particular tried it nine years ago. They lasted about six months in the business.
They went, they purchased their licenses, and they set about trying to obtain the policies. What we have is 30 years of network and process and discipline and data-driven approach to this. If you're thinking in terms of exit strategy, we're followed by five analysts, and two in particular have said they see that as a possible exit. We would see ourselves as a potential target for this if somebody was looking to obtain not just the licenses and the ability to do this, but the process and the network for it.
Back to the insurers, by the way, they can't individually select their own portfolio, but what we're seeing as a growing part of the institutional back end of the business is if we acquire a policy that we know that they simply like to just release or the reserves for, then they become the natural buyer for it and the highest bidder, which is, at the end of the day, what we're in business to do. From their standpoint, we take the policy in, we hold it, we lapse it, the policy goes away, and they get to release the reserves, and everybody's happy. The biggest part of that business that we're seeing, by the way, is many of these policies have already been placed with other funds. Chances are we place them with those funds.
What we're doing is calling on those funds and putting a bid on those policies and moving them. Last part of this as well, because we get questions about the activity in the market. By and large, we're sitting on policies for six months. We're pooling those policies and placing them with the funds. We're seeing quarter to quarter different funds or different institutional participants. By and large, and just to call out one large participant, Apollo is very active in this business. We might see them one quarter. They'll take down policies because they've stood up a fund. We might not see them for another couple of quarters. That's the same thing we're seeing when it comes to the underwriters as well. We're sitting on the policies, we're pooling them, and then we're moving large blocks of them to the interested buyer.
We're in the warehousing business from that standpoint where the policies are, we're leveraging our balance sheet, which we've now built up to deploy this capital, and then pooling them because we have a pretty good idea of who those buyers are going to be. The last part of this, by the way, is inevitably we get the question, and every quarter we get one or two of these. We're sitting on policies that one or two, inevitably, there's going to be a death benefit, and we get to file a claim on that. That's not our core business, but it's just a tailwind to it. Let's get to the diversification very quickly. I've already covered Life Solutions and Asset Group. We originate and we place the policies, and that's our core business. ABL Wealth, back to the leads.
10,000 leads a month that we're doing nothing about, and it drives us to distraction. Think of the power of the data that we're sitting on when it comes to individualized longevity data. Is the investor going to live 10 years or 30 years? That's a key difference. Right now, it's nowhere in financial planning. We are going to address that and do something about it. Imagine the folks who are coming to us, giving us their data, and we have a very good idea. It doesn't need to be medically accurate, but from an investment standpoint, the power of being able to incorporate individual longevity data into financial planning. That's why we've made the acquisition with the ETF provider, and there's going to be more to come. Last piece of this is the tech. Like I said, we sit on policies.
We have roughly $375 million as of last quarter of policies that are sitting on our balance sheet. If there's a mortality, the sooner we know about it, the sooner we're able to file a claim. We also provide some administration to some client funds, and we're going to be doing it for the fund that we acquired, Carlyle. Days or dollars. We've built real-time pipelines into all sources of mortality data for our own portfolio. This is an expertise that comes from our core business. We're now selling that mortality data to public pension plans and informing them if there's an individual on their roster that we think they need to look into because that individual has left. There have been several large instances or high-profile instances where public pension plans have continued to pay out pensioners years after they're passed. Good luck in getting that back.
We're building that towards a revenue of a subscription of around a dollar per life per year. We get to around $1 million of revenue. That's break-even for us. What's our incremental cost of taking in another client? It's roughly zero. That's a subscription-based business that comes from our core competency that's high margin. If I'm summing up the value proposition of Abacus Life, our core business, which we originated and continue to have a leadership position in, is high margin and growing. ABL Wealth and ABL Asset are the diversifier for us to take advantage of the opportunities we're seeing right in front of us. Everything we act on there is going to be accretive and high margin. ABL Tech, from our core competency, is a high-margin coiled spring embedded in our share price or in our shares right now.
I think I have a few seconds if there's any questions. Thank you very much for your time. Yeah. Jennifer, how are you doing?
On the ETF product, do you anticipate having some sort of yield attached to that by virtue of a dividend or anything? Is there any future thought on that?
On the ETF products right now, the quick answer is yes, what's embedded in the product. What we're going to be incorporating into there and we're working with the SEC on is an age-based mortality product where the yield is going to be through a direct allocation through a retail vehicle to individual insurance policies. Short answer is yes. We are officially out of time, so. Thank you guys so much. Thank you.