Attendees at the meeting included Randy Dyer, NSSTA executive vice president, and NSSTA members Joe Long and Ron Walters. The meeting focused on how structures work, including rated ages, the strength of NSSTA’s provider members and the experience that can be brought to bear by our consultant members.

As background, in February, 2005, Governor Joseph Mankin (D) signed SB 1004 which completely revamped the state’s workers compensation system. Previously, the state was a single-source insurer for workers compensation insurance. Businesses had to purchase coverage from the state or self-insure. Over time, the system became inefficient, expensive to administer and interfered with job growth.

The new law created a mutual insurance company, Brickstreet Mutual Insurance Company, to handle renewals and write new business from January 1, 2006 until January 1, 2008. After that, the market will be opened to all insurers licensed to do business in the state.

The new law also attempts to facilitate resolution of more than $3 billion in unfunded and outstanding workers compensation claims. The law established tax incentives to pay for bonds that will be used to cover the claims.

West Virginia’s interest in structures dates back to the 1990's, when it commissioned a study of what structures could do to resolve the case backlog. Several NSSTA members participated in the study and the RFP process that followed, but the state did pursue the issue.

Now, the prospect of using structured settlement experts in workers compensation claims settlements to resolve older cases more efficiently seemed appealing to the Commissioner’s office.

Officials stressed to NSSTA that no decisions about structured settlements would be made in the short term. They said that they are still gathering information on the whole workers compensation issue and welcomed the opportunity to continue the dialogue with the NSSTA, on behalf of the structured settlement industry. To that end, they asked NSSTA to provide answers to numerous questions, which Dyer pledged to provide shortly.

In 1997, NSSTA lead the successful effort to update federal tax law to facilitate greater use of structured settlements to resolve workers compensation cases.

The National Structured Settlements Trade Association is an organization of more than 600 licensed insurance brokers, insurance companies and other members who are involved in establishing structured settlements to resolve personal injury and workers' compensation claims.

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