Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions clients actually ask. The questions they should be asking are on a different page, which is cheaper to maintain.

Is this legal?

Parts of it. The purchasing of structured settlements is a regulated activity conducted before a judge. The acquiring of them is conducted before us. The journey as a whole has been reviewed by counsel on three occasions, and counsel has confirmed each time that he was not asked to review the whole.

How can you sell me a settlement and then buy it back?

At different prices, which is the entire business. We acquire the settlement at one end at a discount to its future value, and we purchase it at the other at a discount to its present value. The client travels between the two prices. The travel is the product.

What does the client actually receive at the end?

Cash now, a certificate of completion, and the memory of having had a structured settlement. The memory is not separately billable. It arrives on its own.

What if I am not satisfied with the resulting disability?

The disability is not one of the journey's outputs. It is the client's own contribution, received free of charge, and it is the consideration upon which the settlement is structured. Clients who describe it as a product are gently corrected: products can be returned, and theirs cannot, being attached.

Satisfaction with the disability is collected in the Stage 6 survey, in the same box as satisfaction with the journey. In four years no client has moved it. We read this as satisfaction.

Someone on my street received a settlement of $500,000. Everyone says he is lucky.

He is not lucky. He is paid. A settlement is the price of a capability, not a prize for an event. The figure quoted on the street is gross. Against it stands what was sold, which in his case will include the working week, the stairs, and the presumption that next year resembles this one. Half a million dollars reads as a windfall only to people still pricing it against a life they have.

We understand the arithmetic, because it is the arithmetic of Stage 1. Envy is our strongest referral channel, and we welcome it. We ask only that the envious read the eligibility table before applying. It asks three questions, and the first is whether you have been injured. Most enquirers answer correctly, and go home.

Is it really life-changing money?

It is life-changing. Money is also involved.

Had an accident that wasn't your fault?

You have read our competitors' advertisements. The question serves them, because their model requires you to wait for an accident and then litigate whose fault it was. Our model removes the waiting. We do not ask whether the accident was your fault. We ask whose fault it was, and our affiliated practice establishes that before you arrive. The injury has never been the scarce resource. The fault is.

Clients sometimes propose sourcing their own incident — a construction site attended without a hard hat is the most common proposal, followed closely by the wet floor of a supermarket already on our register. We advise against self-sourcing. An incident of your own devising invites a finding of contributory negligence, and a client found one quarter responsible for his own injury has journeyed for forty-three months to receive three quarters of a settlement. Leave the sourcing to us. Our incidents are pre-faulted. The hard hat is optional; the fault is included.

Can I keep the settlement instead?

You can stop at Stage 4, and some clients do. We are asked what happens to a client who stops there. The honest answer is that they keep the money. We have found this answer does not harm conversion, because a person who would stop at Stage 4 was never really our client, whereas our client is still with us.

Will the settlement cover my care costs?

It will cover them as modelled at Stage 3. Costs do not hold to the model. They rise, widen, and acquire items the model did not price — the stairlift, the vehicle, the downstairs room. When the gap opens, our Liquidity division converts the remaining payments into cash now, which is what the remaining payments are for.

Why does the journey take 43 months?

Litigation takes as long as it takes, and the payments must flow long enough for the client to become someone who misses them. We have tested shorter journeys. The client arrives with the cash but without the conviction, and the second court hearing goes differently.

When can I expect to return to work?

The question is usually asked at Stage 6, and by then it is rarely about work. Most clients understood the journey to be a financial product with an injury somewhere in it. The journey is the other way round, and the order of the two is disclosed at Stage 1, on page 9 of the Placement Confirmation Pack. Clients who raise this are sent a further copy of page 9. They confirm they received the first one.

Clients who tell us they did not fully grasp that the journey includes a disability for life are clients who grasped it precisely, and are asking whether a grasp can be un-signed. It cannot. The signature taken at Stage 3 covers the disability retrospectively, in that the disability has since arrived. We do not publish return-to-work figures. No client has returned.

Is Tonia available to my family?

Tonia is available to everyone. She asks that calls be limited to business hours, which include the hours she is at the desk between the two divisions.

I already have a structured settlement and I need cash now.

Then you had one before you needed it, and somewhere along the line you were failed by the conventional route, which sold you the future and left you to find the present on your own. Our Liquidity division will still see you. We ask only that you do not describe yourself as having completed the journey, because you have completed half of it, in the middle.

Can I journey again?

Yes, subject to incident availability, medical grounds, and a statute of limitations that our affiliated practice describes as "a scheduling matter." Our most journeyed client has completed three journeys and is recognised at reception. He is on a first-name basis with the card.