Yet again abuses in the factoring business have had light shone on them, this time in Minnesota, and we can only shake our heads. This is what we’ve been talking about for what feels like an eternity. Minnesotan outrage is absolutely deserved. The state legislature there has already determined that reform is necessary, and we hope they take reasonable, sensible measures that account for the reality of the abuses with proper context. The ultimate question born out of this and every other state that has had reform, though, is will it be enough?

The answer: No.

It's easy to add registration and bond requirements, change the domicile language, or the number of days in a disclosure period while beating our chests about fair competition, but in the end the overwhelming majority of abuse is enabled by a single issue: the lack of redaction of the personal identifying information (PII) in structured settlement agreements and ongoing factoring transactions which permits endless, high-pressure marketing directly to annuitants. Protecting the PII of annuitants doesn’t need to be legislated, though it certainly should be. Those of us involved in the business can and should merely add a single confidentiality page to agreements. If preventing harassment and abuse isn’t cause enough to protect annuitants through confidentiality provisions, we don’t know what is. We don’t need to rewrite SSPAs to get a handle on this when we can police ourselves.

Join us in making this small change. It’ll make a huge difference. Maybe the industry might even get some good press every now and then.