Patrick Hindert has variously commented on JG Wentworth as "structured settlement thought leaders", "focusing on the needs and best interests of consumers". What Hindert has never discussed, however, is what our sources tell us is the business practice of structured settlement "servicing" that JG Wentworth was engaging in "on virtually every deal" involving a partial transfer, concurrent with the time Hindert was promoting them.
I have scoured Patrick Hindert's posts on factoring going back 4 years. If someone can show me one post, or page of the text Structured Settlements and Periodic Payment Judgments ("S2P2J") where Hindert and/or his co-authors addressed the subject of servicing PLEASE HELP me find it.
- Is it that Patrick Hindert thinks that servicing is not an issue? If so, why has he not moved to address this very important issue?
- By his silence is Patrick Hindert denying that servicing of structured settlement payments goes on?
- Does Patrick Hindert believe that the an annuitant who sells $2,000 per month of structured settlement payment rights from AAA rated New York Life to a factoring company, while entering into a "service agreement" for the $8,000 per month balance, has the same level of financial security as without the servicing agreement?
In the opinion of this author, HIndert has missed the boat.
- Instead of a topic of significant importance, Hindert made 5 pedantic "expulsions" on an unscientific JG Wentworth Survey that was treated by him as if it was.
- On December 6, 2008 and December 23, 2008 Hindert discussed the JG Wentworth credit downgrades yet no comments were made about how such downgrades might affect those who had already made partial transfers to JG Wentworth but who were subject to servicing agreements for the non-transferred payments.
Servicing agreements come into play when a structured settlement payee initiates a transfer of some, but not all, of their structured settlement payment rights, but the factoring company enters into an agreement to service the rest of the payment rights. Servicing in theory is simple; the annuity issuer makes payments to the factoring company instead of the annuitant; the factoring company skims what's owed to it from the partial transfer off the top; then issues a new check drawn on its own account and "passes through" the "non transferred payments" to the payee.
The big question that nobody has come out to answer is what happens if the "servicing company" goes belly up? Downgrades of the credit of JG Wentworth and Peach Holdings within the last year give plenty of reason for pause.
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