Avoiding the servicing of structured settlement payments can net you tens of thousands of dollars or more in the long run. The servicing of structured settlement payments occurs when a seller decides to sell and split some payments. For example, if you are receiving a monthly sum of $1,000 and decide you would like to sell 50% of each disbursement, you are causing a split. Doing so, will create additional record keeping requirements upon the insurance company. Some insurance companies refuse to do this, thus a special need was created upon the factoring industry to service structured settlement payments.
This meant that if you decided to split structured settlement payments and your insurance company refused to do so, all your payments would then be assigned to the structured settlement factoring company who in turn would split the disbursements. The "servicing" of payments by the factoring company entails receiving each disbursement from the insurance company and then paying to the seller the appropriate amount. In the example above, the factoring company would receive the full $1,000 monthly sum, and then directly pay the seller their $500 split payment.
At initial glance there does not seem to be much wrong with this set-up. However, if or when the seller decides to sell the remaining payments or portions thereof, this is when costly issues surface. Continuing with the example above, say you now decide to sell all or a portion of your remaining $500 per month payments. Because these payments are being serviced by a factoring company you must now inform this factoring company of your intention to sell your remaining payments. Since these payments were "assigned" to this factoring company, they have control over these payments. This control devalues your remaining payments due to several reasons:
1. Your future payments are worth less because payments are made to you directly by a factoring company and not a highly rated insurance company. This means that the payments are not as guaranteed than if the payments are made by a highly rated financial institution. Prospective factoring companies will now have to further discount this additional risk when calculating the present value of your remaining payments. In other works, the risk of payment default is higher from a factoring company than a highly rated insurance company.
2. Your future payments are worth less because the factoring company that is servicing all remaining payments will use this leverage to provide you with low ball offers. In the event you can obtain quotes from other factoring companies, the quotes will be a lot less due to existence of payment servicing and the additional work and risk involved with purchasing payments from a non-insurance company.
These reasons alone can cause you to lose tens of thousands of dollars or more in the sale of your remaining structured settlement payments.
In addition, one has to be weary of situations when your intent is not to have any remaining payments serviced by the factoring company. This happens when payments are not split, but when you sell only parts of some of your future payments, and the factoring company gets you to assign all remaining payments even when not required by the insurance company. Even though the servicing of payments was totally unnecessary, the goal of the factoring company is to lock you into an unsuspecting position and to potentially secure future business from you in the event you should decide to sell any or all of your remaining payments.
The practice of servicing payments is not new and many factoring companies engage in it including J.G. Wentworth and Peachtree Financial Solutions. Regardless of their reasoning, including facilitating the sale of structured settlement payments particularly in cases when the insurance company refuses to split payments or to secure future business by locking in clients by unnecessarily servicing their remaining payments, the fact is that the remaining unsold serviced payments will be heavily devalued.
Even though you may have zero interest of selling any remaining payments, any questions you may have surrounding your structured settlement annuity policy, will now have to be directed to the factoring company and not to your insurance company.
Knowledge is power. You can protect yourself by knowing how the servicing of structured settlement payments can affect the value of your remaining unsold payments.
This meant that if you decided to split structured settlement payments and your insurance company refused to do so, all your payments would then be assigned to the structured settlement factoring company who in turn would split the disbursements. The "servicing" of payments by the factoring company entails receiving each disbursement from the insurance company and then paying to the seller the appropriate amount. In the example above, the factoring company would receive the full $1,000 monthly sum, and then directly pay the seller their $500 split payment.
At initial glance there does not seem to be much wrong with this set-up. However, if or when the seller decides to sell the remaining payments or portions thereof, this is when costly issues surface. Continuing with the example above, say you now decide to sell all or a portion of your remaining $500 per month payments. Because these payments are being serviced by a factoring company you must now inform this factoring company of your intention to sell your remaining payments. Since these payments were "assigned" to this factoring company, they have control over these payments. This control devalues your remaining payments due to several reasons:
1. Your future payments are worth less because payments are made to you directly by a factoring company and not a highly rated insurance company. This means that the payments are not as guaranteed than if the payments are made by a highly rated financial institution. Prospective factoring companies will now have to further discount this additional risk when calculating the present value of your remaining payments. In other works, the risk of payment default is higher from a factoring company than a highly rated insurance company.
2. Your future payments are worth less because the factoring company that is servicing all remaining payments will use this leverage to provide you with low ball offers. In the event you can obtain quotes from other factoring companies, the quotes will be a lot less due to existence of payment servicing and the additional work and risk involved with purchasing payments from a non-insurance company.
These reasons alone can cause you to lose tens of thousands of dollars or more in the sale of your remaining structured settlement payments.
In addition, one has to be weary of situations when your intent is not to have any remaining payments serviced by the factoring company. This happens when payments are not split, but when you sell only parts of some of your future payments, and the factoring company gets you to assign all remaining payments even when not required by the insurance company. Even though the servicing of payments was totally unnecessary, the goal of the factoring company is to lock you into an unsuspecting position and to potentially secure future business from you in the event you should decide to sell any or all of your remaining payments.
The practice of servicing payments is not new and many factoring companies engage in it including J.G. Wentworth and Peachtree Financial Solutions. Regardless of their reasoning, including facilitating the sale of structured settlement payments particularly in cases when the insurance company refuses to split payments or to secure future business by locking in clients by unnecessarily servicing their remaining payments, the fact is that the remaining unsold serviced payments will be heavily devalued.
Even though you may have zero interest of selling any remaining payments, any questions you may have surrounding your structured settlement annuity policy, will now have to be directed to the factoring company and not to your insurance company.
Knowledge is power. You can protect yourself by knowing how the servicing of structured settlement payments can affect the value of your remaining unsold payments.
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