Why is a structured settlement company calling me?

If a company you have never contacted is calling, texting or writing to you about your structured settlement, it is almost certainly a factoring company or a lead generator working for one. They want to buy some or all of your future payments for a discounted lump sum today. You are not required to speak to them, you have not done anything to trigger the contact, and nothing happens to your payments if you ignore them entirely.

The calls feel targeted because they are. These companies are not dialling at random. Understanding exactly how they found you makes the whole thing far less unsettling — and makes the few callers who are actually breaking rules easier to spot.

Where they got your name

There are three common routes, and none of them involves anyone at your insurance company selling your details.

Public court records. Selling structured settlement payments requires a judge's approval in every state that has a Structured Settlement Protection Act, and a transfer petition is a court filing like any other. Filings are public. If you have ever petitioned to sell payments — even a small partial sale years ago, even one that was denied — your name, your payment schedule and often your address sit in a searchable public record. Companies monitor new filings the way property investors monitor deed records. This is the single biggest source of the calls, and it explains why contact often intensifies right after someone completes or attempts a sale.

Lead generators. Online forms offering a "free structured settlement quote" or a "settlement value estimate" frequently belong to marketers rather than buyers. They sell each submission to several companies at once, which is why one enquiry produces five calls in an afternoon. Those lists are resold later, so contact can restart years after you filled in a form and forgot about it.

Bought and aggregated data. Names get combined with commercial marketing data, so a caller may know your rough age, your address history, and that you received a personal injury settlement, without knowing anything specific about your contract terms.

If a caller claims to know your exact payment amounts, that generally means they are reading a court file — not that anyone breached your privacy.

What they are actually selling

The transaction on offer is a transfer, sometimes called factoring. You assign the right to receive specified future payments to the buyer, and the buyer pays you a lump sum now. The buyer prices that lump sum by discounting your future payments back to today at a rate they choose.

That discount rate is the entire economics of the deal, and it is where the money is made. A lump sum offer is not a valuation of your settlement; it is what a buyer is willing to pay after building in their required return, their costs and their risk. Two companies looking at the identical payment stream can quote materially different amounts. If you want to understand the arithmetic before anyone quotes you anything, start with the structured settlement discount rate and what your settlement is actually worth.

Calls are often framed as though something is expiring — a "rate window", a "programme closing", a "pre-approval". Nothing about your payment stream expires. The urgency is a sales technique, not a feature of the market.

The rules the caller has to follow

This is a regulated transaction, not an ordinary consumer purchase, and the protections are real.

State Structured Settlement Protection Acts. Nearly every state has one; New Hampshire is the long-standing exception. These acts govern how payments may be transferred and what a buyer must do first. Requirements commonly include:

• A written disclosure statement given to you a set number of days before you can sign anything, showing the payments being sold, the gross amount, the net amount you receive, and the discount rate applied.
• A recommendation, and in some states a requirement, that you obtain independent professional advice from an attorney, accountant or other licensed adviser who is engaged by you and is not affiliated with or paid by the buyer.
• Court approval, at a hearing, on a finding that the transfer is in the best interests of you and any dependants.

The specifics vary state by state, so the Structured Settlement Protection Act that applies to you is the one to read.

Federal tax law. Internal Revenue Code §5891 imposes a substantial excise tax on a person who acquires structured settlement payment rights without a qualified order from the appropriate court. That provision exists specifically to make unapproved transfers commercially impossible, which is why no legitimate buyer will offer to skip the court step.

The court hearing is not a formality — but the lawyer there is not yours. The attorney presenting the petition works for the buyer. Their duty runs to the buyer, not to you. That is exactly why the independent-advice provisions exist. The full sequence is set out in the court approval process.

Signals worth paying attention to

What you hear	What it usually means
"This offer expires today"	Sales pressure; your payment stream has no expiry
"We can get you cash without going to court"	Either a loan dressed up as a sale, or a serious compliance problem
"We're calling from a settlement registry / audit department"	No such body administers your contract; treat as a marketing call
"Sign here, we'll fill in the numbers later"	Never sign an incomplete transfer agreement
Refusal to send the disclosure statement in writing	The written disclosure is a statutory requirement in most states
"You don't need your own adviser"	Contradicts the independent-advice provisions in most SSPAs

A related but distinct nuisance is a caller claiming you owe money and demanding to be paid out of a settlement. That is a collections matter with its own rules, covered separately in structured settlement debt collectors.

If you do not want to sell

You do not need to justify yourself, and you do not need to negotiate. Practical steps:

1. Say nothing about your contract. Do not confirm payment amounts, dates or the issuing insurer. There is no upside to filling in gaps in the caller's file.
2. Ask for the company name, licence details and a written disclosure by post. Genuine buyers can produce these. Most cold callers will not follow up.
3. Register on the National Do Not Call Registry and report unwanted calls to the Federal Trade Commission. This does not stop everything, but it creates a record and does constrain legitimate operators.
4. Stop filling in quote forms. Each submission is a fresh entry on a resold list.
5. Keep the letters. If a caller misrepresents who they are or what the transaction is, your state attorney general and state insurance department are the right places to send that.

Your annuity issuer keeps paying you on schedule regardless. Ignoring these calls has no effect on your settlement whatsoever.

If you are genuinely considering selling

Then the calls are irrelevant; the process is what matters. Sell because you have a specific need that your payment schedule cannot meet, not because someone called. In that case:

• Get quotes from more than one buyer, and compare the effective discount rate, not the headline lump sum.
• Sell the smallest portion that solves the problem. A partial sale keeps the rest of the schedule intact.
• Engage your own adviser, paid by you, before signing anything.
• Read the disclosure statement line by line, particularly the difference between the gross payments transferred and the net cash you receive.

The overall mechanics of a sale, including what the court looks for, are covered in selling a structured settlement.

Frequently asked questions

How did they get my phone number if I never contacted them?

Most commonly from a public court file created when you or someone else petitioned to transfer payments, or from a lead generator that sold an online enquiry. Marketing databases fill in the rest. It does not indicate that your insurer or your attorney released anything.

Can a structured settlement company do anything to my payments without my agreement?

No. Payments can only be transferred with your signed agreement and a court order approving the transfer, and federal excise tax rules under IRC §5891 make transfers without a qualified order commercially unviable. Nothing changes because you took or ignored a call.

Is it a scam or a legitimate business?

Structured settlement factoring is a legal, regulated industry, and most callers are real companies competing hard for a small pool of sellers. That said, the same pool attracts bad actors. The distinguishing features of a legitimate operator are a willingness to put the disclosure statement in writing, to go through the court process, and to accept that you have your own adviser.

Will telling them to stop calling actually work?

Sometimes, and it is worth asking in writing rather than only by phone, since a written request creates a record. Because the underlying source is usually public court records and resold lead lists rather than one company's database, contact from other firms can continue regardless of what any single caller does.

This article is general education about how the structured settlement transfer market operates, not personal financial or legal advice, and it is not a statement of the law in any particular state. Structured Settlement Protection Acts, disclosure requirements and court procedures differ by state and change over time. Verify the rules that apply where you live, and speak to an attorney or accountant of your own choosing — not one supplied by a buyer — before signing anything.