by Structured Settlement Watchdog
If you have no alternative but to sell structured settlement payments you must shop around to get the best deal. Finding buyers should not be that hard given the constant assault of ads with any search of the key word ” structured settlement”.
What is an Exchange?
- An exchange is a marketplace where securities, commodities, derivatives and other financial instruments are traded.
- The core function of an exchange is to ensure fair and orderly trading and the efficient dissemination of price information for any securities trading on that exchange. Exchanges give companies, governments, and other groups a platform from which to sell securities to the investing public. Read more: Exchanges: Explanation, Types and Examples
Structured Settlement Exchange
- Slapping a label on something doesn’t make it an exchange any more than labeling a structured settlement receivable a secondary market annuity, or just a plain annuity. It’s not an annuity.
- The term Settlement Exchange or Structured Settlement Exchange, implies a regulated marketplace.
- The truth is the opposite as I covered in my August 8, 2015 post Settlement Exchange | Warning, Not a Regulated Marketplace – Structured Settlements 4Real® Blog
Abridged history of “structured settlement exchanges”
- Income Stream Exchange, founded in 2014 by convicted felon and Ponzi schemer Todd Dyer, who is cooling his heels in jail for the next 14 years. Attempted to gain legitimacy by pirating videos from the NSSTA YouTube channel and placing testimonials from the NSSTA website about structured settlements in a misleading context for anticipated financial gain.
- Selling Your Structured Settlement (SYSS), a website established by the late Nicholas John Jackson (1980-2024), a Missouri man who served jail time, multiple times, from 2013-2015 and worked for Genex Strategies, Inc, for 3 months in 2012 and published on his LinkedIn that he was a “Senior Financial Adviser” to (Mt Airy Faker) David Springer, despite having no financial licenses or professional credentials.
- Structured Settlement Exchange appears in a Crowdfunder page associated with Matt Lutz and Tarpon Bay Capital. When I spoke to Matt Lutz on June 19, 2018 he stated that it was an experiment and no longer in operation.
- SettlementExchange.org, the website of Settlement Exchange, LLC, run by Clarence Dean, claims that “approved funders now make direct ‘Guaranteed’ cash bids for your Structured Settlement payments, Annuity payments and Lottery Annuity payments”
” Will beat JG Wentworth’s and Peachtree’s rates by 50%” in June 2018 Paid Ad was Tip Off to Buffalo operation
Everyone loves to take a swing at the 800 lb gorilla even if, after 2 bankruptcies in 8 years, the super sized simian weighs a little less.
- Google Adwords have recently served up ads for selling structured settlement payments, that boldly state that a certain company, using the URL enuities.com, will beat JG Wentworth’s and Peachtree’s rates by 50%.
- The ads state that they won’t just beat JG Wentworth’s rates but will destroy them.
- If true and can be substantiated, that’s pretty impressive considering JG Wentworth’s low 4% cost of money plus costs and willingness to do deals at a loss, if necessary to beat out competing quotes.
- If there is no way out but to sell a structured settlement that sounds great, “where do I sign up?”
The Reality
According to reliable sources, JG Wentworth possesses a prefunded credit line of $50,000,000 at a 4% rate, making them extremely challenging to surpass until those funds are depleted. Consequently, the structured settlement secondary market is currently under significant pressure. To outperform them by 50%, a competitor would need to offer a 2% discount rate and/or offset the substantial economies of scale and volume discounts JG Wentworth enjoys on legal expenses.
The disclaimer says “Estimate of beating other offers by 50% are based upon historical data and market research of current factoring industry leaders”.
The connection to an active structured settlement annuity General Agency and settlement planning firm
Same address too
- Clicking on the ads bring you to a website that purports to be a “structured settlement exchange”.
- It is remarkable that all of the images feature people of color.
- Calling the phone number on that websiteon June 15, 2018, brought a return call from Milestone Consulting, a general agency in the primary market, that is appointed with many structured settlement annuity carriers and is well connected with the trial lawyer community.
- The agency has also advertised in the past and apparently continues to advertise about using structured settlement receivables with current plaintiffs or their attorneys.
- Nita Bhatia, the company representative I spoke with said that the platform will actually be launching in the Fall of 2018. It is just gathering names and information about structured settlement annuitants.
- It has retained a lawyer, Earl Nesbitt, who is well connected counsel to the National Association of Settlement Purchasers and its members.
In June 2017, Seventh Amendment Holdings, LLC submitted an application to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in an attempt to trademark “Structured Settlement Exchange”. The application was rejected by the USPTO for descriptiveness (i.e. cannot trademark descriptive) . Seventh Amendment Holdings, LLC, the holding company for Milestone Consulting, appealed.
On April 3, 2018 the USPTO said:
DESCRIPTIVENESS REFUSAL IS MAINTAINED AND MADE FINAL
Registration was and remains refused because the applied-for mark merely describes key features of functions of applicant’s goods and/or services. Trademark Act Section 2(e)(1), 15 U.S.C. §1052(e)(1); see TMEP §§1209.01(b), 1209.03 et seq.
The applicant seeks registration of STRUCTURED SETTLEMENT EXCHANGE for: Providing an online marketplace for plaintiffs who have received a settlement in a legal action to sell their settlements or annuity payments, in whole or in part, directly to individuals, institutions, and investors. The proposed mark merely describes the services because it immediately tells consumers that they feature an exchange in the form of an online marketplace in the field of structured legal settlements.
The examining attorney provided ample evidence that the component terms of this mark, and the terms used together, are merely descriptive in this context. This evidence includes dictionary definitions as well as on point industry evidence that others use this wording descriptively in this context. See evidence discussed in and attached to September 27, 2017 Office action. The applicant failed to refute or even address the evidence. Moreover, the applicant provided no evidence in support of its position.
Seventh Amendment Holdings held the trademark to ” Structured Settlement Exchange” from August 7, 2018 to February 25, 2025 when it was canceled by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and is displayed in the public record
Notwithstanding the Trademark application, various entities have registered domains that include the term “structured settlement exchange” or “settlement exchange”
What about the optics?
The idea of an exchange is not a bad one. However, despite what I’m sure were good intentions, common ownership and operation with an individual or entity that owns a structured settlement general agency, an entity that provides pre-settlement loans and also engages in the marketing of structured settlement derivatives to investors in concurrent fashion, raises an eyebrow, in my opinion.
What Should a Structured Settlement Exchange look like?
- Independently operated and managed, not tied to any structured settlement general agency, by common ownership, affiliation or otherwise.
- The exchange and its participants should be regulated.
- The marketplace must be transparent
Last updated December 13, 2025