Litigation

A number of structured settlement master general agencies who are member companies have national and/or regional sub-brokering arrangements with wire houses in which such wire houses representatives are directly, or indirectly given access to structured settlement quotes produced on software (that is distributed only to appointed agents of structured annuity companies) and a share of compensation.

Fortunes are purportedly being made by such arrangements, yet is NSSTA seeing a dime of dues from the estimated thousands of stock broker and wealth managers who have been given the "keys to the kingdom" by NSSTA's own membership? This is happening at the same time the organization has had a tough time pulling the trigger on essential marketing expenditures.

Is something wrong in Washington folks? Is it fair that a company with say 50 or 60 dues paying members (or paying dues on behalf of 50-60 members) at $1,000 a head, gets away with a $60,000 hit when it actually has a sub-broker footprint of 500 or 750? How about if the company has only  3-4 NSSTA dues paying members with a much larger sub-broker footprint? Perhaps there is a way to tax revenue streams!  A sub-broker tax! Yep, I thought that would grab your attention!

Some fear having every Tom Dick & Harry and part timer in the business, but the alternative is "time to tax the rich". That's what they want to do in Washington isn't it?