State and Federal Regulators in most of the 50 states of the United States of America regulate the viatical settlement industry. The chart linked here from Advanced Settlement’s web site shows the state by state licensing requirement status of viatical settlement brokers or providers as of June 2006.
State and Federal Regulators in all of the 50 states would be wise to pass similar laws regulating factoring companies engaging in structured settlement factoring (often called "structured settlement transfers" to curtail the misleading advertising and business practices of some of them which hurt consumers. Even though Court approval is required at the end of the transaction as a barrier to abuse, much consumer time is wasted by the lack of formal regulation of advertising and business conduct that would come with licensing requirements. Each State can easily support the additional responsibilities via the collection of licensing fees. Moreover, the more states that require them, the cost of licensing fees will also be a deterrent to the small fry abusers.
It seems natural that State insurance departments should be involved since a structured settlement factoring transaction partly involves the discussion of an insurance product or full or partial disposition of rights to receive payments funded by an insurance product.
I have had some conversations with the leaders of some of the more upstanding factoring companies who seem to be in favor of such regulation as it will help mitigate the painting of them with the same brush as their unenlightened and abusive bretheren, including the sploggers. Perhaps the leaders of the two industries (factoring and structured settlements) can find some common ground in this regard to achieve something that would be beneficial to consumers and ultimately to both industries.
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