by Structured Settlement Watchdog
“You deserve more”, says Crowfly, LLC on the home page of its website. I could not agree more. Confidently sell your structured settlements and get what you deserve” is the CrowFly value proposition to sellers on another page. Should getting what you deserve be limited by what’s served at a fintech flea market?
Fintech/Shmintech, Always Shop Around!
A Florida case concluded last Fall, shows that Crowfly, LLC is a company that originates structured settlement factoring deals and is not merely a fintech platform. This is no surprise.
According to publicly available court records accessible online, In Re: CrowFly, LLC Petitioner, and MARTIN WOLVERTON, Respondent was e-filed in the Circuit Court of the 7th Judicial Court in and for Volusia County, Florida on September 20, 2019 at 1:47pm. The Petition for transfer of structured settlement payment rights of a 60 year old Florida man with no dependents, who had never sold payments from his 2007 structure before.
The petition called for a transfer of One (1) lump sum payment in the amount of Two Hundred Thousand Dollars and No Cents ($200,000.00) due and payable on December 20, 2022 (the “Assigned Payment”).
Using Crowfly, LLC’s own calculator for an estimate of what Mr. Wolverton’s structured settlement payment was worth came up with $160,472.20 To be fair, the information was retrieved from the Crowfly, LLC website in May 2020, while the Petition was submitted in September 2019.
Nevertheless, the money offered to Mr. Wolverton in exchange for his lump sum payment was $150,000, representing an 8.89% discount rate, according to the Mandatory Florida disclosure submitted with the petition. 8.89% is above the average that CrowFly indicates on its website is its average discount rate, for an investment in a factored structured settlement payment that has been characterized by CrowFly as having “risk profiles aligned with treasuries or other fixed income assets”. The November 2019 Order approving the structured settlement transfer stated that the amount CrowFly was to pay in consideration for the transferred lump sum was $159,000 . This represents a discount rate of about 7%.
Upon information and belief there are companies with costs of money between 4-5%. That could have raised additional money for the seller. Such a short term duration is attractive to investors, particularly payment rights from Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, a company in business since 1868.
Always Shop Around. No Matter What. You Deserve More!
from Oliver Twist (1948)