Litigation

On June 4, 2009 I discussed the number of rated age requests going to structured annuity underwriting departments without legitimate intent for business to follow (on the rated age lives) is a blood gorged clot, clogging the structured settlement service artery and affecting everyone's ability to service business in the structured settlement industry.  See Rated Age Abuse By Structured Settlement Brokers Under Investigation

Now former Ringler and Structured Financial Associates broker Ryan D. Roth, President of Medval, brow beats American General Life Insurance Company on the Medicare Set Aside blog for "balking at issuing rate ages for cases they deem to be Medicare Set-Asides" and for a lack of understanding of the MSA Process. Roth states that the problem is that MSAs are often prepared months before settlement offer and a broker has no way of knowing which cases will ultimately settle and/or settle with a structured settlement.  Roth suggests as a certainty that if a company refuses to produce a rated age that they have virtually no chance of getting the business when and if it does settle. He attacks "beleaguered" American General for leaving business on the table.

Oddly Roth beats his chest with the worn digruntled settlement planner mantra that "American General behaves as though they are still the 800 pound gorilla of the structured settlement industry". Get over it dude! Frankly American General is entitled to make a business decision as to which market segment it wishes to focus, just like companies such as Aviva, Massachusetts Mutual, AEGON and others who decided to completely withdraw from writing new business in the market to focus on other lines of business. While Roth's company may indeed handle rated age requests ethically, others may not. It is the unethical SOB's who abuse the process that affect the rest of us, not just on the MSA side of things, but on the liability side too.

Showing a "sense of maturity" commensurate with his years of experience, Roth refers to losing an American General appointment as a minor annoyance at worst or a "badge of honor" at best. With "friends" like Roth it's no wonder that companies want to leave the industry.

Instead of attacking American General, how about simply giving business to the markets that want the MSA business? Let market forces prevail. Furthermore,  how about working with those interested markets about increasing capacity and /or bringing in new markets? With one out of every five MSAs purportedly resulting in the MSA  funded with a structured annuity (according to Roth's company metric) Roth and his minions should be able to demonstrate how cost effective such business is.

Finally this author would like to suggest that Mr. Roth refrain from using the jargon"AMGEN" to describe American General. AMGEN or Amgen is of course the world's largest independent biotech company, a fact that Roth should be sensitive to given that MedVal is involved with "Pharmacy Benefit Management".  Surely the following statement coming up in a search engine result might cause confusion " While the financial security concerns are largely a non-issue, the perception that AMGEN is somehow damaged as a result to their ties with AIG is lingering".