It was announced today that John McCulloch will be leaving Allstate Life Insurance today as it's director in charge of the structured settlements division. I was informed that John will be taking a position with EPS Settlements doing marketing and advance market support for the EPS group.

As most industry people are aware John was the brain child behind a great deal of the non-qualified innovation in our industry while at both AEGON/Transamerica and then with Allstate. In particular the development of the Structured Sale product, work on structured legal fees and other innovations should be areas of significant premium growth over the next 5 years so his loss at the company side is going to be noticed by our industry.

Innovation and creation of new markets and products isn't exactly a hallmark of the settlement industry and as such Allstate and the industry's loss is going to be EPS's gain. Hopefully Allstate steps up, puts a strong person in that position and continues to pursue the development of the structured sale and non-qualified markets as those clearly remain the great untapped areas of growth for the Settlement Industry.