Litigation

Structured Settlement Brokers and Settlement Planners will likely find the going tougher in the coming months as the backlash against "cash now pushers" and "factorability crack" distributors in the structured settlement industry continues to build steam and the self inflicted structured settlement and settlement planning industry weakness is fully exploited.

I hate to tell anyone I told you so, but I TOLD YOU SO. Ask around, your bretheren ARE losing cases as the necrosis continues.

Quite a few brokers and settlement planners, but not all,  ARE going to continue to lose business and the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the above. The revelation that there are members of the structured settlement industry who are profiteering when the tort victim is suffering a massive capital loss is a matter that may soon be one for the authorities. What may attract authorities where a factoring transaction takes place within a short period of time after the structured annuity is issued. The other day I posted how an 18% effective discount rate to sell today on a lump sum due in 5 years meant, in the example, a capital loss that exceeds virtually every bear market in the last 35 years.

How a company like Peachtree Settlement Funding can get away with charging high teens discount rates is beyond comprehension.

While the fat opera singing vikings with horns and scripted morons yelling from balconies gets a few laughs and brand awareness for JG Wentworth, there is a growing doubt that "education" and wall papering is going to restore goodwill. It is a case of not what you say but what you do, or NOT do.

When I hear about a broker with a major firm apparently making round trip commissions on a 7 figure case within a year of issue, it turns my stomach. This guy deserves to be exposed. He knows who he is as does the firm he works for and the NSSTA Board of Directors. The broker in question apparently works for a firm that is represented on the NSSTA Board of Directors.

A factoring brokerage company like Bentzen Funding Solutions is "protected" by the Society of Settlement Planners (for years has been its membership chairperson) and certain members of the structured settlement industry perhaps due to some believing the mantra "I'm one of your own". Bentzen may have been a structured settlement broker. Now she's not.

In December 2007 Bentzen colluded with Settlement Professionals and former SSP President, Jack L. Meligan, to try and thwart this author's efforts to establish a structured settlement clean vendor list and failed. The list serves to show attorneys for tort victims, judges and insurers which structured settlement, brokers, settlement planners and now recovery management specialists are willing to put their ethics out in from of them and state under penalty of perjury that they DO NOT take fees for structured settlement factoring transactions.

The list has 24 signatories out of 600 or so in the industry. Only one company, 4structures.com, LLC, has a published policy on factoring. Why have others been slow to respond or not responded at all?  Some have come up to me and say they don't take vig, but there is nothing out in the open and therein lies the problem. What are they afraid of?  Why is there nothing on their web sites? Rhonda Bentzen has stated that she gets all her business from the structured settlement industry and 90% of those are taking fees from her. Are you one of those people? Do these people come clean now? Or, do they risk being exposed in an audit of Bentzen's and other's books some time down the road as part of an investigation into the transparency of all factoring industry payments to intermediaries?

Only recently I heard from a broker who referred a case to Bentzen, but had no intention in taking the fee that Bentzen offered him, and didn't.

The Structured Settlement Clean Vendor List is an ongoing project. All active producing structured settlement brokers and settlement planners and other participants are encouraged to join, to make a statement to attorneys, annuitants, judges and other decsion makers.  Alternatively you and/or your company are encouraged to make a public statement of your/its policy on factoring.

The details about the clean vendor list including an FAQ, with a downloadable Declaration form are linked below.

FAQ about Structured Settlement Clean Vendor List

Structured Settlement Clean Vendor List