January 13, 2016 – As a structured settlement expert for nearly twenty-five years, I’ve always been grateful I chose a career path that allows me to help people. Not everyone has that honor or special responsibility.

It’s a privilege assisting those who need your help.

People whose lives have been turned upside down because of an automobile accident, workplace injury or assorted other types of losses lend themselves to a need for qualified structured settlement financial expertise.

Meeting clients at a time when they are most vulnerable, many still struggling to adjust to life following disabling injuries, always humbles me since I realize that any day the same fate could befall me or anybody else.

Because of the nature of the business, however, clients rarely have the need or desire to stay connected with the very individuals – attorneys, structured settlement professionals and other experts alike – who helped them through their claims resolution process.

Moving on to a new life by shedding all reminders of an unhappy past event becomes paramount.

But since structured settlements represent long-term financial obligations that stretch out for many years, often over a lifetime, we occasionally field calls from those we’ve helped. Sometimes clients need to notify the life companies of a change of marriage or residency status, change a beneficiary or sometimes they just misplace their structured settlement contract and need to secure a replacement copy.

I like when those calls come in because it gives me a chance to talk with the client about how they may have benefited from the help I provided years earlier. It’s a great opportunity to learn.

One such call came in today.

“Ryan” called because he needed to change bank accounts for one of the structured settlement streams he was receiving via direct deposit. While I looked up the details of his contract, we had a chance to catch up a bit.

NOTE: I’m overly protective of all my clients and NEVER provide their real names or details of their settlement for obvious privacy reasons.

I asked Ryan some open ended questions about how things had been going since I helped him settle his Workers’ Compensation claim six years earlier.

Well, he didn’t need much prodding. He sounded very happy. As he talked, I listened and jotted down some of the comments he made:

“(Choosing a structured settlement) was the greatest decision of my life.”

“If I’d have taken that lump sum (instead of the structured settlement) it would have been long gone by now.”

“YOU SAVED MY LIFE!”

This last one really got me.

He actually said I saved his life!

The structured settlements industry came into existence based on a belief that we can make an essential difference in people’s lives.

The universal support they enjoy – from disability advocacy groups, the insurance industry and the plaintiff and defense bars to members of Congress on both sides of the aisle – is strong testament to the high value society places on structured settlements.

We help people. That’s what we do.

And sometimes we even save lives it appears!

Oh, I realize Ryan was speaking figuratively about me saving his life since I didn’t perform emergency room surgery, pull him from a burning building or extract him from hostile territory in a war zone with enemies closing in.

All I did was to do my job by helping him design a structured settlement payout plan tailored to meet his anticipated future needs when he was in the midst of settling his workers’ compensation claim.

But if he feels that saved his life, who am I to argue with him?

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