by Structured Settlement Watchdog®
On March 26, 2010, settlement purchaser Genex Capital attempted to induce an "interest rate panic" among structured settlement annuitants. In the Genex Capital missive " Selling Your Structured Settlement Is About To Get More Expensive" Genex CEO Roger Proctor made what has turned out to be a spectacular cry of wolf:
As reported previously this was the Genex CEO's emphatic warning: 
"WARNING AGAIN: If you are thinking of selling your structured settlement payments, do it NOW, before interest rate increases eat into the value of your future payments and make you poorer".
According to Wikpedia, Panic is a sudden sensation of fear which is so strong as to dominate or prevent reason and logical thinking, replacing it with overwhelming feelings of anxiety and frantic agitation consistent with an animalistic fight-or-flight reaction. Panic may occur singularly in individuals or manifest suddenly in large groups as mass panic (closely related to herd behavior
As I reported on April 21, 2012 in " Less Cash Now For a Proctor-ate Cause", "Proctor's sense of urgency and act of "clairvoyance" proved to be unfounded and interest rates actually declined, in some cases massively, between March 26, 2010 and April 2012. Lower interest rates mean a higher present value".
5 Year US Treasury
March 26, 2010 2.59%
April 19, 2012 0.86% WOW!
10 Year US Treasury
March 26, 2010 3.86%
April 19, 2012 1.98% WOW!
30 Year US Treasury
March 26, 2010 4.75%
April 19, 2012 3.12%
Now Looking back MORE THAN 4 years later…
June 17, 2014 (at or about time of posting)
10 year US Treasury 2.64%
30 year US Treasury 3.48%
Both the 10 year and 30 year treasuries are still lower than they were on March 26, 2010!
It therefore follows that had you succumbed to the Genex Capital "interest rate panic" of March 26, 2010 and sold your structured settlement payments to Genex Capital, or any other settlement purchaser, when you didn't really need to sell your structured settlement payments it's possible, that you eroded ALOT more of your hard fought for settlement money, than you would if you sold them today or simply held on to your payments to receive them as scheduled.
Even those with a law degree and an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau sometimes get it wrong.
Crises, real or imagined, leave structured settlement annuitants vulnerable to opportunists. The structured settlement secondary market is full of them. In 2008, another settlement purchaser took advantage of fears surrounding AIG and attempted to induce annuitants to sell earlier than perhaps they needed to. Not only did AIG survive and pay back its bailout money but the company after a name change to Chartis, rebranded back to AIG because it proved to be such a strong global brand, despite the interest rate default swap induced impairment to the parent company. Moreover no structured settlement annuitant with an AIG subsidiary lost any of their structured settlement payments, no payments were missed!
Unfortunately what is at best a long running "legislative ignorance", leaves a structured settlement secondary market where sales practices are unregulated and solicitation of annuitants may be performed by individuals without licensure or state registration. Some may have even served jail time.
Sen-sation? I'm an "Al-satian" baby!
Images : Dreamstime/com