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Structured Settlement Industry Teachers MUST Demonstrate Superior Financial Literacy and Command of Facts Concerning Their Business to Inspire Confidence

By John Darer

In this episode of teaching the structured settlement teacher we focus on the web site of Brian Milner of Millennium Settlements:

Brian Milner on "the structured settlement process":

"Once the defendant agrees with the claimant on a stream of periodic payments designed in the best interest of the claimant, the defendant assigns its obligation for payment to a life insurance company. The life insurance company then funds the claimant?s payments through the purchase of an annuity policy which offers attractive pricing and flexibility. The Structure may also be funded through the purchase of government securities"

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The Defendant assigns its obligations to the qualified assignment company ("the assignee"). The assignee then funds its obligation to make payments to the payee (examples of payee may be the claimant or a trust, the claimant's attorney or the claimant's attorney's firm) through the purchase of an annuity or alternative permissible qualified funding asset. Click structured settlement process for more information.

At the time of writing this author believes the only qualified assignee that is a life insurance company is the New York Life Insurance and Annuity Coporation, the assignee used with structured settlement annuities issued by New York Life insrance Company.

Brian Milner on AIG situation:

Milner's website also includes a Q&A regarding the AIG situation which is highly commendable. The Q&A however, includes erroneous information concerning prior structured annuity issuer impairments.

Milner states that Executive Life is the only company "that went into receivership".

In additon to the 1991 Executive Life impairment, there was Confederation Life, Monarch Life (significant because bankruptcy creditors were not permitted by the Court to have priority over the structured annuity recipients).

Milner states that the Court ordered 100% payments to Executive Life annuitants, but neglects to point out that Executive Life had shortfalls that, in the days before qualified assignments, had to be made up by the Defendant or Insurer annuity owner. It wasn't pretty.

It's vital that those disseminating information in the structured settlement/settlement planning space check the facts, please!

Full post as published by Structured Settlements 4Real on September 17, 2008 (boomark / email).