May 9, 2013 – You’ve seen the silly commercials.

Your intuition told you there was something wrong, possibly immoral, about a company advertising on TV to buy future income payments from someone in a wheelchair at a very steep discount only to turn around and sell those benefits to others at a hefty profit.

You put these companies in the same category as the guy who steals from his baby’s college fund to buy booze.

You understand and believe in the benefits of structured settlements and for years the practice known as factoring has been a bone of contention with you.

Well, as evidenced by today’s joint News Release issued by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), you are not alone.

The Investor Alert entitled “Pension or Settlement Income Streams – What You Need to Know Before Buying or Selling Them” tells us that you weren’t the only one concerned.

In 2009, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) addressed the National Structured Settlements Trade Association (NSSTA) about concerns he and his Senate colleagues had about some of the practices they were hearing about involving factoring.

Here’s a video excerpt of Sen. Durbin’s comments.

We won’t editorialize too much here because we want you to get right to the text of the alert.  You can form your own opinions on the issue.

But understand that factoring, under current law, is legal.

And even we’d be hard pressed to disagree with those who insist that there are hardship instances when trading one’s guaranteed future security for cash today is beneficial.

Nonetheless, we champion this alert and are glad this is on the radar of these two regulatory organizations.

FINRA and the SEC exist to protect investors and to ensure the fairness of capital markets and they don’t issue these warnings lightly.

So we sincerely hope you’ll take the time to read this Investor Alert before buying or selling any structured settlement or pension benefits.