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October 27, 2014 at 06:06 PM
For both the claims and life insurance sides of the insurance industry, this is a difficult time to be involved with structured settlements.
Low interest rates are tamping down claimant interest, making structured settlements less valuable to claims professionals. From 2008 to 2013, annual structured settlement premium dropped 24 percent in real terms.
On the life side, falling demand and the significant costs of running a structured settlement program have spurred many of the nation’s biggest insurers to leave the market. The numbers are stark: In 2003, there were 23 life companies issuing structured settlement annuities. By 2009, that number had shrunk to 11.
Today there are only 8 life companies issuing structured annuities and two of those (Mutual of Omaha and New York Life) have a combined market share of less than 10 percent.
Assessing the risk
But there’s an even bigger shadow over the industry these days and it threatens one of the product’s perceived key advantages for claims departments: namely, the belief that use of a structured settlement to resolve a claim does not entail additional risk. This spring, a class action lawsuit was filed against the industry’s largest structured settlement company, Ringler Associates, for its role in setting up structured settlements funded with annuities issued by Executive Life of New York (ELNY).
A year ago, ELNY went into liquidation and nearly 1,500 beneficiaries lost nearly $1 billion in future structured settlement payments. For many annuitants, this meant losing nearly 60 percent of their future payments.
Many of these beneficiaries who were set up with ELNY structured settlement annuities lived in states where ELNY was not licensed. Worse, the consultants who sold these annuities pocketed huge undisclosed commissions while concealing what they knew about ELNY and its parent, First Executive Corp.
For claims professionals, this litigation threatens to upend the idea that use of a structured settlement does not entail additional claims risk. As AIG President of Claims Rick Woollams told an insurance audience two years ago, the most important thing for AIG when settling a claim is that once the payment is made, the case is permanently closed.
Referencing ELNY specifically, Woollams stated that AIG would have to pay some ELNY claims twice. Perhaps not surprisingly, he added that he had no tolerance for double-paying claims.
