It has come to this author's attention that Clearscape Funding, a Symetra subsidiary is badgering structured settlement recipients to sell the rights to their future payments. It appears that this company is increasing it's efforts to buy back it's own paper at rates much higher than the industry average.

In the past week, Settlement Quotes LLC has competed on three separate cases where Clearscape Funding has offered the annuitant discount rates between 10-14% as opposed to Settlement Quotes offering rates between 7.7- 10%.

For those individuals unfamiliar with discount rates, a discount rate is a rate used to price future structured settlement payments. The lower the rate, the more money the annuitant receives in their lump sum payment. The company purchasing your structured settlement payment rights should always provide this number so you know if you are receiving a fair deal. Depending upon the payment structure of your annuity, you should receive a rate between 8- 15%. There are circumstances which can cause the discount rate to be higher but still providing the annuitant with a good deal.  Discount rates are calculated from the amount and time of each payment. Payments that are further out in time or have a larger present value will always have a lower discount rate, the opposite applies for payments which are closer in time or have a smaller present value, the discount rate will appear higher for these payments.

It's always important to remember that payments closer to the present date will always be worth more than payments further out in time. Feel free to use our structured settlement discount rate calculator to calculate the value of your future payments.

This author can understand why a company like Symetra would offer a service like Clearscape Funding to provide an alternative for their clients to cash out their future payments as opposed to using companies like  JG Wentworth or Peachtree Financial. Clearscape Funding should be able to provide the best rates in the industry especially on it's own paper. For some reason this isn't happening and Symetra policy holders are suffering. Either Clearscape doesn't think its own paper is worth the going industry average or they are trying to take advantage of these structured settlement recipients.

If you are in a situation where you need to cash out your structured settlement in order to provide liquidity, always shop your payments to multiple companies in order to get the best price.