Disability Law

NSSTA 2008 Fall Meeting - 2

By Patrick Hindert

S2KM's prior blog post about the NSSTA 2008 Fall Meeting (NSSTA 2008 Fall Meeting-1) highlights the advancing age of NSSTA's leaders and conference attendees; and also recommends that NSSTA's current leaders focus on transitional industry leadership.

This S2KM blog post speaks to the next generation of structured settlement leaders.

Until the U.S. government bailout, AIG's structured settlement program defined the claim management approach to structured settlements.

AIG's structured settlement program had everything to do with AIG and much less to do with injury victims. AIG's structured settlement program featured:

• AIG products;
• AIG agents;
• AIG approved lists and settlement documents;
• AIG's rights to final refusals;
• AIG's "sharing" of injury victims' tax benefits; and
• AIG's policies opposing 468B funds and feigning ignorance (actually exhibiting ignorance) about settlement transfers.

AIG's structured settlement program, as it existed prior to the U.S. government bailout of AIG, is history.  So, also, in S2KM's opinion, is the claim management structured settlement business model AIG represented, promulgated and perfected.

The future of structured settlements focuses on injury victims and their attorneys - both personal injury trial attorneys and settlement planning attorneys - as well as judges, mediators, guardians, trustees, and government benefit regulators.

The new profession is called "settlement planning". Structured settlements represent a strategic settlement planning product.

On October 8, 2008 (less than 3 weeks ago), AIG Chairman Edward Liddy stated in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson: "we owe our employees and the American public new standards and approaches." Liddy was responding to reports of outrageous business conduct by AIG executives and agents following the government bailout - a sorry AIG culture that now receives ongoing public revelations and deserved criticism.

Why shouldn't Liddy's confession of AIG's failed business standards and approaches be applied to AIG's structured settlement program and business model?

Why shouldn't the leaders of the structured settlement industry utilize the AIG debacle to re-examine the most fundamental components of their own claim management business model - as represented by AIG and others?

Are current structured settlement leaders, who have supported AIG and participated in AIG's structured settlement program and business model, capable and appropriate leaders for defining and promoting "new standards and approaches" for structured settlements?

Where is the next generation of structured settlement leaders?

As new leaders, are you capable of articulating and building new structured settlement standards and approaches? How do your new standards and approaches improve and grow the structured settlement market?

S2KM will continue this discussion in subsequent blog posts.

Full post as published by Beyond Structured Settlements on October 30, 2008 (boomark / email).