The Society of Settlement Planners (SSP) and the National Structured Settlement Trade Association (NSSTA) hosted sequential annual meetings the week of April 26 in Washington, D.C. This blog post begins S2KM's reporting about those meetings.
SSP's meeting (titled "Securing the Financial Needs of Injury Victims and their Families") was notable for the diversity of attendees, topics and viewpoints. Several NSSTA members were among the attendees as well as settlement planning and secondary market attorneys, annuity and trust providers, primary and secondary market intermediaries, authors, bloggers and law students.
Former NSSTA Executive Director Randy Dyer was a featured SSP speaker. Dyer spoke twice and provided:
- A definitive history of structured settlement insolvencies - annuities and bond trusts.
- An allegorical lesson about how to jump start structured settlement annuity sales.
Kevin Mack, former Director of Travelers' structured settlement program and former Chairman of NSSTA's legal committee, offered insights to "in-house" structured settlement programs. Mack made several recommendations for growing and improving the structured settlement industry including: more plaintiff intermediaries; improved education for judges and plaintiff attorneys; plus mandatory "disclosure" of structured settlement compensation and conflicts of interest.
Joseph Tombs, SSP's new President and Chairman of the Registry of Settlement Planners (RSP) Board of Directors spoke about three topics. Tombs:
- Reported on the status of the RSP program;
- Honored the first 10 RSP graduates;
- Outlined current "state of the art" for settlement planning.
Richard Risk moderated SSP's settlement planning tax panel headlined by Sylvius von Saucken and Peter Wayne. von Saucken and Wayne responded to a series of Risk's questions addressing qualified settlement funds (QSFs), commutations, estate taxes, punitive damages, non-qualified assignments and sexual battery tax requirements among other issues.
Texas attorney Phillip McCrury surveyed state laws for judicial approval of minors' settlements. Common features in many states: "best interest" test; prohibitions against conflicts of interest; segregated accounts; guardian ad litems; and "reasonableness" of attorney fees.
Mark Popolizio reported on Section 111 of the Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP Extension Act of 2007 (MMSEA). Popolizio summarized the new CMS NHGP User Guide and addressed reporting triggers, deadlines and issues for "responsible reporting entities" (RREs).
Eric Nordman, Research Director for the NAIC, discussed "life insurance insolvencies". Nordman summarized historic data and warned about future issues including systemic risks and the challenge of defining "transparency".
Christi Fried and David Eichenbaum spoke about settlement trusts and settlement planning software respectively. Tim Nay's presentation about "special needs trusts" outlined relevant laws and added practical advice and perspective.
Anthony Alfieri's "Litigation and Legislative Update" summarized Spencer v. Hartford; the PLR for non-qualified assignments; plus the Fresno County and Rapid Settlement factoring cases among other topics.
John Bowman, Director of Federal Relations for the American Association for Justice (AAJ), discussed how the 2008 elections have impacted AAJ's political priorities. One primary AAJ objective: keep medical malpractice out of anticipated health care reform.
Patrick Hindert, Managing Director of S2KM Limited, offered strategic analysis about the current settlement planning industry.
Congratulations to SSP, and especially Greg Maxwell, Joseph Tombs, Richard Risk and Rhonda Bentzen, for their continuing high education and annual meeting standards.
In subsequent blog posts, S2KM will:
- Summarize the NSSTA 2009 Annual Meeting;
- Analyze and compare the settlement planning and structured settlement industries.
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