Litigation

I received a ranting stemwinder and somewhat farcical email from Rhonda Bentzen today in which she asks whether she can refer to me by "a title that is currently granted only to a top Shia mujtahid, after completing sat'h and kharij studies in the hawza", in between rants.  After deploying  my shamshir" to do readers the courtesy of wacking away the superfluous comment and ongoing "threats" to expose "the sordid details of my life",  let's discuss some of the interesting points she raises:

Bentzen
"SAF (Structured Asset Funding) is my funding source, plain and simple.  Therefore, when there are delays in funding, it becomes an issue that they must deal with, not me.  That?s the only reason the correspondence to the annuitants is on SAF letterhead".

Comments
The comment is interesting because Bentzen literally says that "it is not her problem" which presumably explains her lack of returned phone calls and what was related about her inaction to this author by the CT woman. Turf it off!

Bentzen
"You accuse me of ?paying off? structured settlement brokers.  I do not pay off anybody.  The ?referral fee? is a business practice that was in place well before I switched over to this side and is not prohibited by any law, rule or regulation..."you keep repeating that 90% statistic ad nausiem (sic) even though you are fully aware that the statistic is completely outdated and would have been similar for anyone else at the time who solicited broker referrals".

Comment
The following post was made by Rhonda Bentzen on July 12, 2007, less than 20 months ago, which is about when the structured settlement transparency initiative began.

Download Bentzen Funding Solutions 90 pct blog post 12-12-2007

There us no need for further proof that payment of fees to brokers, who often do little more than make  a referral is a tax on the annuitant who receives less. The structured settlement transparency intiative was in part the result of Bentzen's disclosure of the now published statistic.  If in fact the 90% statistic that she published is now outdated,  whether not it is the result of this author's considerable efforts (and the public and private supporters of the structured settlement transparency initiative) to expose the issue, then perhaps Ms. Bentzen could enlighten the public and the industry about the current statistic.

This author (and others) do not like what the published statistic represents. Why wouldn't evidence of a lower level of demand, reduced payments by Bentzen, and/or reduced acceptance of such practice be welcome? 

Bentzen
"Did you confirm your facts about servicing split structured settlement payments?  Are you aware that this is dictated by the insurance companies and not the factoring industry?  Do you really think that any factoring company wants the hassle of servicing split payments?"

Comment
This author has addressed factoring company servicing of structured settlement payments on a number of occasions, specifically  March 27, 2008, April 2008, May 16, 2008 and July 28, 2009 in addition to the comments related to the Connecticut woman case which involved Structured Asset Funding (SAF) and providing a link to Andrew Cravenho's  April 22, 2008 post "The Real Truth About Servicing". A review of these articles will show that this author has presented the issue fairly.

On May 16, 2009 the post "NSSTA and SSP Leadership Asked to Address "Servicing" of Structured Settlement Payments by Factoring Companies" provided a challenge:

 "Perhaps Rhonda Bentzen can address... the issue of structured settlement payment "servicing" on her blog and thereby do more for the industry than...".

(Note that the time Bentzen had not written any posts in 5 months, had never publicly addressed this important issue and the only response to Andrew Cravenho's and my posts in 2008 was to refer to Cravenho as "my little pet").

The issue of "servicing" IS a bit of a dirty little secret and the structured settlement industry needs to get the bottom of it.

Surely those who place structured settlements (who have sold the qualities of the annuity issuer AND THEIR SERVICE) and the attorneys for injured plaintiffs, do not want it to hit the light of day that someday the client's only contact for problems with annuity payments may be a cash now pusher, whether simply because the annuity issuer will not split payments or otherwise.

If the root of servicing is that life insurance companies on the one hand do not want to split payments and on the other hand do not want to develop an alternative solution (like Allstate's AFEN rider) then I ask again who is demanding a solution?

N.B. All underlines were added for emphasis