by Structured Settlement Watchdog
When it comes to disappointing inaccurate information about structured settlements, Alanna Ritchie, staff writer for Annuity.Org usually rises to the occasion. This time she misses her tackle on the tertiary market scam label "Secondary Market Annuity" by citing 4 sources who have used it, and some who still use it.
1. Alanna Ritchie Bombs Away, Again!
"A popular and competitive market since the 1980s, the secondary annuity market is an industry allowing customers who have already bought annuities to sell their policies to another provider. In exchange, they receive a lump sum for secondhand annuities and structured settlements In primary annuity market"
Reality
- Nobody who has a structured settlement bought an annuity policy. They have have the right to receive future periodic payments as damages in consideration of a release of liability.
- Nobody who has a structured settlement can sell the policy that backs up the periodic payment obligation that is due them, because the annuity is purchased by the qualified assignment company and an occasion by a Defendant.
- In a structured settlement factoring transaction, only the right to receive payments can be transferred not the owner ship of the structured settlement annuity policy.
- Ritchie puts the cart before the horse and suggests that a seller of structured settlement payments, for example doing business with the companies that Annuity.org shills for (CBC Settlement Funding and Fairfield Funding) is selling "secondhand annuities".
- Factored structured settlement payment rights are simply not like picking up "schmatta" from the local flea market.
2. Alanna Ritchie's Bunker Busting Contradiction in Terms
THIS Alanna Ritchie's cons inexplicably leave out transactional risks that have cost retirees their investments in these non annuities. Ritchie say "Transfer issues, since some secondary annuity transfers are denied in court is a con. "Though there is no monetary risk, says Alanna Ritchie, annuitants may miss out on a profitable opportunity" BUT THEN
THAT "Since then, the industry has quickly developed into a profitable market, functioning amid minimal regulation. However, the lack of uniformity and regulations for factoring company practices left annuitants vulnerable. Unsophisticated annuitants sold their payment rights at steep discounts, and some unscrupulous factoring companies purchased payment rights with little regard for the future financial needs of their sellers"
Plenty of litigation out there to prove it since 2013 as the seedy underbelly of the secondary market is exposed and the layers are pulled back.
Dim, very dim indeed.