Disability Law

SSP 2009 Annual Meeting - 1

By Patrick Hindert

The Society of Settlement Planners (SSP) and the National Structured Settlement Trade Association (NSSTA) hosted sequential annual meetings the week of April 26 in Washington, D.C. This blog post begins S2KM's reporting about those meetings.

SSP's meeting (titled "Securing the Financial Needs of Injury Victims and their Families") was notable for the diversity of attendees, topics and viewpoints. Several NSSTA members were among the attendees as well as settlement planning and secondary market attorneys, annuity and trust providers, primary and secondary market intermediaries, authors, bloggers and law students.

Former NSSTA Executive Director Randy Dyer was a featured SSP speaker. Dyer spoke twice and provided:

• A definitive history of structured settlement insolvencies - annuities and bond trusts.
• An allegorical lesson on how to jump start structured settlement annuity sales.

Kevin Mack, former Director of Travelers' structured settlement program and former Chairman of NSSTA's legal committee, offered insights to "in-house" structured settlement programs. Mack made several recommendations for growing and improving the structured settlement industry including: more plaintiff intermediaries; improved education for judges and plaintiff attorneys; plus mandatory "disclosure" of structured settlement compensation and conflicts of interest.

Joseph Tombs was a featured SSP speaker. Tombs, SSP's new President, is also Chairman of the Registry of Settlement Planners (RSP) Board of Directors. Tombs:

• Reported on the status of the RSP program and introduced the first 10 RSP graduates;
• Outlined the current state of the art for settlement planning.

Richard  Risk moderated SSP's settlement planning tax panel headlined by Sylvius von Saucken and Peter Wayne. von Saucken and Wayne responded to a series of tax questions from Risk  addressing Qualified Settlement Funds (QSFs), commutations, estate taxes, punitive damages, non-qualified assignments and sexual battery tax requirements among other issues.

Texas attorney Phillip McCrury surveyed state laws addressing judicial approval for minors' settlements. Common features in many states: "best interest" test; prohibitions against conflicts or interest; segregated accounts; guardian ad litems; and "reasonableness" of attorney fees.

Mark Popolizio reported on the Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP Extension Act of 2007 (MMSEA) Section 111. Popolizio summarized the new CMS NHGP User Guide as well as reporting triggers and deadlines.

Eric Nordman, Research Director for the NAIC, spoke about "life insurance insolvencies". Nordman summarized historic data and spoke about future issues including systemic risks and the challenge of defining transparency.

Christi Fried and David Eichenbaum spoke about settlement trusts and settlement planning software respectively. Tim Nay added perspective about settlement trusts during his presentation about special needs trusts.

Anthony Alfieri's "Litigation and Legislative Update" addressed Spencer v. Hartford; PLR 150850-07 for non-qualified assignments; as well as the Fresno County and Rapid Settlement factoring cases.

John Bowman, Director of Federal Relations for the American Association for Justice (AAJ), discussed how the 2008 elections have impacted AAJ's political priorities, opportunities and challenges. One primary AAJ objective: keep medical malpractice out of anticipated health care reform.

Patrick Hindert, Managing Director of S2KM Limited, offered his strategic analysis of the current settlement planning industry.

Congratulations to SSP, and especially Joseph Tombs, Richard Risk and Rhonda Bentzen, for their continuing high education and annual meeting standards.

In subsequent blog posts, S2KM will:

• Summarize the NSSTA 2009 Annual Meeting;
• Analyze and compare the current status of the settlement planning and structured settlement industries.

Full post as published by Beyond Structured Settlements on May 03, 2009 (boomark / email).