Litigation

Now that the cat is out of the bag about the reasons for structured settlement servicing, 4structures.com, LLC is compiling a list of structured servicing companies and their telephone numbers so that annuitants can have their questions answered. This author is canvassing all factoring companies and factoring brokers to provide the following:

1. Does your company service payments for annuitants who have sold only a portion of their structured settlement payment rights to you?
2. Do you use a third party servicer? Under what circumstances?
3. Your toll-free customer service phone number
4. If you use a third party servicer, what is their toll free customer service number?
5. In reference to your answers to #3 and #4, is this a dedicated line for servicing customers (who have beneficiary changes, direct deposits, change of address etc) that is separate from the call in center for responses to TV , radio and Internet ads?

To recap, structured settlement servicing is necessary primarily because some structured annuity issuing life insurance companies choose not to split annuity payments so the annuitant must sell ALL of their structured settlement payment rights (i.e. even the unsold portion)  to a factoring company or servicing entity. Whether the reason for the choice being made by the life insurance companies is saving money or otherwise the fact is that such circumstances exist.

Assuming that the factoring company is the servicing company (our sources tell us that is the case most of the time) it has now been well established through our research that the annuitant must contact this entity, NOT the annuity issuer for questions about the payments being serviced. It is only fair in such circumstances occur that an annuitant should not have live in a state of confusion and deserves to have the most direct route to the answers to their questions and/or service needs.

It has been said that less than 5% of structured settlements are factored. This author believes that this figure represents only the sold payment structured settlement payment rights and that the volume of payments being serviced is larger.