by Structured Settlement Watchdog
Structured settlement lead generator websites are like dandelions. When the wind blows, they spring up everywhere, figuratively turning what should be an easy online search into a lawn strangled by dandelions and crab grass.
Structured settlement lead generator websites are to structured settlement consumers, like dandelions and crab grass to your lawn.
AnnuityExpertAdvice.com is the latest website dandelion lurking on the fringes of the annuity industry and they are clearly no expert in annuities or structured settlements.
AnnuityExpertAdvice.Com flops, poorly articulates the scam label ” Secondary Market Annuity”
“Ever see television commercials about getting cash now for your annuity? This is called Secondary Market Annuities or SMAs. Basically, a secondary market annuity is the selling of your current income annuity (immediate annuity, deferred income annuity, structured settlements, lottery payouts) at a heavily discounted rate to a 3rd party company in exchange for a lump sum of cash. That 3rd party company will then pocket annuity income distributions as a long term investment”.
- The process that was erroneously described with reference to a structured settlement, is called a structured settlement factoring transaction.
- A structured settlement factoring transaction is not an annuity, it is a term that appears in the Internal Revenue Code at IRC §5891 (c)(3)(A) as, in general, “a transfer of structured settlement payment rights (including portions of structured settlement payments) made for consideration by means of sale, assignment, pledge, or other form of encumbrance or alienation for consideration”.
- The sale of structured settlement payment rights DOES NOT involve transfer of annuity contract ownership.
- This sort of thing was not lost on the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) which in December 2018 stated that factored structured settlement payment streams are neither annuities nor insurance products.
- The NAIC further said in final Statutory Issue Paper 160 on April 6, 2019, that insurers who buy factored structured settlement payment streams may not account for these assets as annuities or insurance products in their financial reports.
AnnuityExpertAdvice.Com is a Stunning Example of Clueless. by Calling SPIAs, DIAs, Structured Settlements and Lottery Annuities Examples of Secondary Market “Annuities”
- To begin with, what some marketers label as a Secondary Market Annuity in their sales and promotional efforts is not an annuity; it is a receivable. Using the term “annuity,” a legitimate insurance product, to describe a receivable, which is not an insurance product, is misleading and should be regarded as deceptive when employed by merchants to transfer receivables to investors, including those who may be injury victims.
- Immediate Annuities (SPIA) and Deferred Income Annuities (DIA), Structured Settlement Annuities (SSA) and Lottery Annuities are insurance products issued by receivables.
- The insurance companies themselves have to be licensed and anyone selling the products must be licensed where the product is being sold.
- Buyers of structured settlement receivables do not enjoy the same statutory protections that people who buy legitimate annuities, or receive thme as part of a structured settlmeent as compensation for damages do.