Within the structured settlement factoring industry, every company is not alike. If you are in need of liquidity and have exhausted all other options, getting a lump sum of money in exchange for your future structured settlement payment rights may be the option for you. . Here are a few tips to help you get the most money for your structured settlement:
1) Research Companies
- Check the company’s Better Business Bureau record. Is the number of complaints reasonable? Make a decisions whether the company uses ethical business practices.
- Do a Google search on the company. Do you see any complaints? Bankruptcies?
- Get the opinion of outside sources and provide the sources with the information you have uncovered. Sometimes a different opinion can be a better opinion.
On May 26th, 2010 Judge Norma Ruiz denied a request for court approval to transfer future structured settlement payment rights to Settlement Funding of New York, LLC (Peachtree Financial). The opinion, seen here, is a direct response to the “cash now” advertising of this company. It’s good to see a judge take the time to enforce the Structured Settlement Protection Act as noted by this author.
The Wall Street Journal on Friday, July 23, 2010 published an article titled “Another Can’t-Miss Deal That Can Miss Spectacularly“.
This article is inaccurate and misleading on a number of accounts.
Firstly, our Group has transacted over $350 million in these types of payments with zero defaults.
Secondly, the liquidity risk that is mentioned in the article is a risk common to many investment insurance annuities and is not unique to annuities purchased on the secondary market. It is a risk that is fully disclosed in our Group’s Buyers Guide that is given to all prospective buyers. Buyers accept this risk because the guaranteed nature of the investment with significantly superior fixed rates of return are worth it. The investments are designed as long-term holds and should not be purchased for short term strategies. For example, they qualify for IRA plans.
For the past three years North Carolina Structured Settlement Recipients have been unable to sell the rights to their structured settlement payments because of a change in the North Carolina Structured Settlement Protection Act. Throughout these years many annuitants came to us with tragic circumstances where we normally would be able to help them create liquidity by cashing out their structured settlement, but because of this new law we were unable to help them.
Below is the section of the North Carolina Structured Settlement Protection Act which has not allowed most North Carolina structured settlement recipients to sell their payments since enacted:
It has come to this author’s attention that Clearscape Funding, a Symetra subsidiary is badgering structured settlement recipients to sell the rights to their future payments. It appears that this company is increasing it’s efforts to buy back it’s own paper at rates much higher than the industry average.
In the past week, Settlement Quotes LLC has competed on three separate cases where Clearscape Funding has offered the annuitant discount rates between 10-14% as opposed to Settlement Quotes offering rates between 7.7- 10%.
It has come to our attention that a rumor being spread by a competitor that could affect your choice when choosing a company to work with when cashing out a structured settlement. The false rumor being spread states that certain companies provide extremely competitive quotes as a loss leader on a transaction in order to secure future deals from that particular annuitant from vastly higher discount rates to make up for any loss occurred in the original transaction.
In this video, Andrew Cravenho, President of the Settlement Quotes, LLC Structured Settlement Factoring Exchange is interviewed by John Darer of the Legal Broadcast Network. Viewers can learn how a Structured Settlement Factoring Exchange is a viable option to use when selling structured settlement payment rights.
What in the world is going on with Structured Asset Funding. After observing the saga of the Connecticut woman in this article, one would think that the folks over at Structured Asset Funding (123 Lump Sum or FundingCash.com) would finally get their act together. Well apparently not!
There have been many articles written throughout the World Wide Web that promote misinformation about the structured settlement factoring industry and specifically selling the rights to structured settlement payments. This author would like to dismiss these myths and provide a faq for annuitants to refer to when selling the rights to their payments.
Mike Green, an attorney based out of Philadelphia who represents several structured settlement factoring companies published an informative article on the Settlement Capital blog late last week. There are a couple of points that were mentioned in the article that I would like to discuss.
In the article published by Mr. Green, he explained the concept of an annuity’s present value. I would like to provide a few examples on the concept.
