Structured Settlements - Plaintiff Loyal Structured Settlement Company

Structured Settlement Industry News - 12/2007

Here is a bit of recent news that affects the Structured Settlement industry and your practice as a plaintiff attorney.

Kaiser’s nine-month profits more than double
Kaiser and their subsidiaries announced gigantic jumps in net income, operating income and investment income for the third quarter ending September and the year’s first three quarters, including startling increases sure to raise questions about the organization’s non-profit status… << read article at bizjournals 

SPI commentary:
What would one attribute a huge drop in professional liability reserves to?  One guess is that the steady drumbeat on Tort Reform coming from Washington D.C. these past 8 years has influenced the jury pool to the extent that there are more defense verdicts and lower damage awards, which translates into lower liability reserves needed…

New York announces plans for Executive Life Bailout
Insurance regulators in New York announced a rescue plan yesterday for the Executive Life Insurance Company of New York that should pay 100 cents on the dollar to the insurer’s 118,000 customers. But insurance professionals said the plan would make it impossible for customers to cash in their policies without incurring substantial penalties, known as surrender charges… << article at NY Times

SPI commentary:
Eliot Spitzer (NY Governor) and Insurance Superintendant Eric Dinallo announced this deal, which comes as GOOD news to roughly 11,000 Structured Settlement beneficiaries of ELNY.

One potential drawback is that in the future, casualty companies will point to the fact that their brethren contributed heavily to this agreement, as the reason why they must have their own brokers involved on their behalf in new Structured Settlements.

I suspect that the reason many casualty companies contributed dollars to this cause was because they were going to be liable for the entire shortfall on the Structured Settlement annuity block anyway.  Many of these casualty companies bought these annuities directly without assigning their liability to a third party, a common practice in the early years of structuring settlements. 

Whatever the reason, these casualty companies would not have done this unless it was a good deal for them.