Eric Kirsch joined Star Mountain Capital, a specialized investment manager, as senior advisor.
Kirsch has more than 40 years of investment and advisory experience at global financial institutions. Most recently, he served for more than a decade as global chief investment officer at Aflac, where he was responsible for building and overseeing Aflac’s investment strategy and investment portfolio representing more than $100 billion of assets with investment teams in New York and Tokyo.
“We are excited to have Eric’s distinguished investment and insurance industry knowledge, and leadership,” Brett Hickey, founder and CEO of Star Mountain Capital, said. “As a former insurance and asset management-focused investment banker approximately 20 years ago, I appreciate Eric’s aligned mindset focused on data-driven investment decisions and strategies that have high probabilities of success. We welcome his aligned insights and experience in direct lending as we continue to strive to provide investors with attractive yields, and less correlated returns across customized investment solutions including risk-based capital optimized structures for insurance companies.”
“I am delighted to join Star Mountain’s experienced team in what I believe is a very attractive asset class for insurance companies. They have a compelling business model, purpose-built to execute against the supply and demand imbalances and barriers to entry inherent with lending to and investing in growing U.S. small and medium-sized businesses,” Kirsch said. “Representing an estimated 44% of U.S. GDP, I believe Star Mountain’s portfolios benefit from harder to access investments and portfolio diversification benefits, all attributes insurance companies look for when investing on behalf of their general accounts.”
Kirsch was the chief investment officer and executive vice president at Aflac and the president of Aflac Asset Management, the asset management subsidiary of Aflac until April 2023. Since joining Aflac in 2011, he was responsible for building and overseeing Aflac’s investment strategy and investment portfolio representing more than $100 billion of assets with investment teams in New York and Tokyo.
Prior to Aflac, he served as global head of insurance asset management at Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM), part of Goldman Sachs from 2007 through 2011. During his tenure he built out this specialty business globally raising more than $50 billion of assets and propelling GSAM.
Prior to Goldman Sachs, Kirsch spent 27 years at Deutsche Bank within Deutsche Asset Management and Bankers Trust Company in several leadership roles including global head of insurance asset management, head of North America Fixed income and head of stable value fixed income.
Kirsch currently serves on the board of Kuvare Holdings, a private equity owned financial services platform that provides insurance, reinsurance and asset management solutions. He also serves on the boards of two private asset managers under the Aflac Asset Management general account investments. He also remains a senior consultant to Aflac.
Kirsch’s philanthropic activities include serving as a trustee of the Baruch College Fund where he is chair of the investment committee. In addition, he is a trustee of the Jersey Shore University Medical Center Foundation and serves on the investment committee of the Hackensack-Meridian Hospital.
