The National Structured Settlement Trade Association (NSSTA) hosted its 2008 Fall Regional Meeting at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Francisco from October 22-24.
Other structured settlement bloggers, including Mark Wahlstrom of the Legal Broadcast Network, have already published online reports about the NSSTA Fall meeting. Like Mark, S2KM's blog author, Patrick Hindert, is an associate NSSTA member. Unlike Mark, this author did not attend any of NSSTA's educational programs.
S2KM did attend four NSSTA committee meetings and the NSSTA opening reception. NSSTA appropriately restricts information sharing from NSSTA committee meetings. This S2KM blog post offers S2KM's general 2008 observations about NSSTA as well as recommendations for NSSTA to consider in 2009. Additional S2KM blog posts about NSSTA will follow.
As Mark Wahlstrom reports, there was a testiness at the NSSTA 2008 Fall meeting. Mark characterizes NSSTA's mood as "fear and loathing" with an acknowledgement to the late Hunter S. Thompson.
Part of Mark's characterization might result from the age of NSSTA's leadership. In 20 plus years of attending NSSTA meetings, this author cannot remember an older group of NSSTA conference attendees. The entire generation of NSSTA leadership is fast approaching retirement. They represent the history, not the future, of structured settlements.
Part of Mark's characterization might result from appropriate industry concerns about the financial strength of AIG and other structured settlement annuity providers. For a "bullish" report on the structured settlement industry, see the comments of Jack Meligan and Michael Upchurch in S2KM's blog report about the NASP 2008 Annual Meeting. See also: S2KM's AIG structured settlement wiki.
For NSSTA and the structured settlement industry to survive and grow, the best of NSSTA's current leadership should proactively assume a transitional leadership role. Transitional leadership responsibilities should include:
- Strategically analyzing the current structured settlement market - as opposed to living historically in the old (circa 1986) structured settlement market.
- Identifying and engaging the leading settlement planning knowledge experts (many of whom are not NSSTA members) in strategic and public conversations about the future of structured settlements.
- Recruiting and empowering a new generation of structured settlement and settlement planning leaders within a new business model (settlement planning) as opposed to the dying structured settlement business model (claim management).
Based upon this author's limited participation in the NSSTA 2008 Fall meeting, NSSTA's leaders still don't understand or address the strategic issues impacting their industry. These strategic issues and priorities include:
- Understanding the differences between a claim management structured settlement business model and a settlement planning structured settlement business model;
- Understanding how IRC section 5891 and the 46 state protection statutes have changed structured settlements and organizing a positive and proactive strategic industry response;
- Identifying and addressing the legislative and regulatory changes needed to effectively integrate structured settlements with special needs trusts and Medicare set-aside arrangements;
- Planning whether, how and when the structured settlement industry will transition its knowledge and processes into Internet-based platforms, tools and resources.
For additional S2KM reports about NSSTA, see S2KM's structured settlement wiki and upcoming S2KM blog posts.
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