STRUCTURED SETTLEMENT

Will any transaction in today’s business afford an equal opportunity to all parties to come up at once? No, every competitor in the race wants to be a winner. But, it is the structured settlement business that takes up to resolve conflicts and create win-win conclusion to costly disputes. Thus all parties gain his share of profit from structuring a long term settlement because a lump-sum amount is saved in circumvented court cost and other expenses bound to tax public coffers.

The target of Structured Settlement is to provide mutual benefits to the needy plaintiffs (injured victims). A network of independent brokers seeks to negotiate, with a range of structured settlement products that are marketed by life insurance companies with the casualty insurer. Funded by a life insurance product like a single premium immediate annuity, a structured settlement finances the needy plaintiffs or the injured parties. It is done in a way in such a way that the recipient is assured of having needy funds available to them for many years to come. Philip Corboy, Chairman, American Bar Association’s Special Committee on Medical Professional Liability once said “For years, structured settlements have offered great benefit and financial security to injury victims, surviving spouses and children involved in tort cases."

Structured settlement thus is a long-term financial package, an annuity or a contract that gives consent to a settlement to go for periodic payment. The installments continue for a specific period of time or for a lifetime and are paid annually, semi-annually or quarterly depending on the needs of the plaintiff. Varieties of circumstances lead a plaintiff (injured Victim) go for structured settlements are: -

1) Purchasing a house or vehicles
2) To pay off mortgages
3) To pay of a large amount of medical bills
4) Debt elimination
5) Education cost

These structures provide immediate payment for special damages to individuals and families suffering mainly from injury or accidents. The beneficiary of this structure is that it disperses money for legal claims and often a lump sum payment is made through the purchase of an annuity for a life insurance company.


How it works?

A contractual agreement is signed between the qualified settlement fund trustee and the insurer for periodic payment and future beneficial payment in addition to the immediate cash in exchange for a release and payment is done according to the deal. The Structure settlement industries ensures for the quickest possible transaction. The settlements are “Structured” to make relatively small settlement look bigger. William Robinson, Past President, Kentucky Bar Association said "The structured settlement has proven so effective at keeping seriously injured and disabled Americans off public assistance that [in 1997]; Congress amended the tax code to allow for increased use of structured settlements in workers compensation cases."

The different purchase options offered by the companies buying structured settlement according to the plaintiff’s financial need are:-

1) Lump-sum payoff
2) Partial lump-sum payoff
3) Reconstructed payment stream


Who qualifies for Structured Settlement?

Only people having physical injuries are people with disabilities and the families of the injured are qualified for claiming funds for structured settlement. So this scheme is available to less than 1 % of the population. But an injured individual must purchase the structure just at the time of settlement otherwise it will be too late.


Why might I need a Structured Settlement?

People turn to a Structured Settlement companies mainly for investment and compensation. Thus a person receiving a good amount chooses a structured settlement company to convert their amount into a regular income. The structured settlement companies offer to assist the plaintiffs when they face a large compensation bill, by arranging a monthly payment that will cover the ongoing losses.


Which company offer Structured Settlement?

Amongst the many financial companies that offer Structured settlement, a reputed and established company should be approached that has the ability to provide the security and advice required to become risk-free. As it is designed to meet the need of the plaintiff, one should verify that the financial advisor possesses the required specialist knowledge and the company chosen has the necessary qualification and expertise

The obvious benefits of buying and selling Structured settlement plans

One significant benefit is that the payment stream provided in the structured settlement is tax-free for certain period of time if the set-up is appropriate. According to Alan Reich, President, National Organization on Disability, "Structured settlements serve the public good by ensuring that victims don't dissipate their settlements and wind up on public assistance."
The entire settlement need not be sold. One can sell a portion of it, to raise cash for certain purpose like holidays, new car, educational expenses etc. Regular installments is made over an extended period of time and sometimes throughout the lifetime of the client and in case of the accidental death of the plaintiff the guaranteed portion of the settlement are passed over to the holders’ estate. Purchasing a structured settlement provides stability. It is popular for those who want to ensure that their retirement is well catered for by converting their lump-sum into regular ongoing monthly income.

Conclusion
The Structured settlement is similar to factoring that uses businesses to maintain their cash-flow. It is a tax-free and legal business. The insurance companies give highest commission but one must keep an eye on the fact that it is not eating up the main principle. According to William Garmer, Board of Governors, Association of Trial Lawyers of America "Structured settlements are a benefit that I and thousands of plaintiff attorneys have recommended to clients as one of the best ways to guarantee financial security and independence." Companies should boost the cash flow and give the best out of the investment made. Otherwise the settlement package will go into bankruptcy and defaults.

Shyamolima Mutsuddi
SEO & Content Writer

Is social networking causing a decline in face-to-face human interaction?

Yes, social networking is causing a decline in face-to-face human interaction. The face-to-face human interaction is reckoned as an idle paradigm of meeting of minds. It is the warrantor of authenticity as one can look at the conversational partner and search for tacit signs of truthfulness or falsehood. Face-to-face conversation demands complex forms of behavior called 'phatic' functions by semiologists. But, this entire phatic signs can be short-circuited in computer conferencing or online networking. The criterion codifications for opening and closing conversations are discarded in social networking. The term “Social Networking” pertains to a category of internet applications that facilitates one to contact friends, business partners, or other individuals together using a miscellany tool. Face-to-face networking brings forth keener results than just interacting with someone online, but the ease of online social networking makes the technique quite popular. Today, the term "social networking" has turned to be more popular with the buzzword Maker, to let in online relationships with people, that he never met face-to-face. “Networking online is fantastic! E-mail and web sites allow networkers the chance to share information in a quick, efficient and easy manner while building lasting relationships,” says Melissa.B, Data groomer, Intel.
Social networking is a way of plugging in through versatile social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds. Social networking or conferencing resembles letter writing, where the phatic functions are quite weak. The melioration in technology makes rapid exchanges of message possible. The contour of the social network facilitates one to decide a network’s utility to its individual. A group of mortals with associations to other social universes is probably having access to a broader orbit of information. It is fuller for individual success to have associations to a multifarious networks rather than many connections within a single network. Similarly, people can exert influence or act as brokers amongst their social networks by bridging two networks that are not straightaway linked (called filling social holes).

Social Networking is one of various new technologies that have created a whole new grade of identity. Electronic bulletin boards, dialogue systems and computer conferences exhibit their users to each other via an explicit written language. The social subject is altered by the abstraction of extremely curbed forms of self-presentation. But the uttermost form of self-definition takes place in 'Chatting' systems, where an individual gain dates through an interchange of pseudonymous messages. It is a synergistic kind of classified personal advertisement. Chatting systems, like 'hacking', are freakish social creations that are attached to the mainstream of technological innovation on which they reckon. Chatting or Computer conferences produce electronically social environments; every bit of it is as complex as the constructions that process the social activities in face-to-face confrontations. Other examples of social networking are Tribe.net, LinkedIn & OpenBC. They are the Internet social network service, used mostly for business connections in 160 countries. LinkedIn is used to find jobs, people and business opportunities suggested by the user's direct contacts, or by individuals linked to their contacts. More than 1,000 alumni and professional organizations use LinkedIn for Groups, members-only areas on LinkedIn that facilitate networking among their members. Friendster, a privately owned Internet social network, is based on the Circle of Friends technique for networking individuals in virtual communities and demonstrates the small world phenomenon. Every user creates an online identity by filling out a questionnaire profile and uploading a user picture, and then delimitates a gallery of friends, and the service then incorporates these galleries, allowing a user to search through a list of their friends their friends' friends, and so on.


The urban environment is progressively webbing with composite telecommunications networks. Studies showed that a large part of emerging technology implicates alterations in the designs of communication patterns in both human-to-human and human-to-machine interaction, but the impingement of technology on the transmutation of spaces has affected the communication patterns as well. People using a network like meetup.com, Ryze.com or 60secondNetworking.com has better advantages because those services allow one to network online as well as in person. “60secondnetworking.com has helped me establish relationships with it industry professionals. Being new to the Seattle area, I found 60secondnetworking.com to be easy to use and full of information directed towards technology-minded and career-focused professionals. The networking events are well attended and represent not only it professionals but other Seattle industries allowing for cross-industry networking, “says Nancy.D, Business manager, Microsoft.
60secondNetworking.com is slowly changing the face of social networking being online and an individual can get the best of both worlds. The 60 second network assists the individuals’ to exercise extreme networking by aiding him in meeting a lot of people in a selected venue or online. One only needs to subscribe to the database and start searching instantly for contacts, and leads for businesses or referrals. The cost is on a per event basis. ‘Dakotta’ is the founder of 60 second networking. By using such type of social networking, one can have fun, remember about referrals and partnerships, help out as many people as one can, can reach to recruiters to in search of jobs, find additional resources, bring Plenty of Business Cards etc. Thus Jeremy.l, Sr. recruiter, Microsoft, says that “60secondnetworking makes it not only easy, but a fun way to meet candidates and colleagues!”

"Our hypothesis is there are more cases where you're building shallow relationships, leading to an overall decline in feeling of connection to other people," said Robert Kraut, a social psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon's Human Computer Interaction Institute. Research conjectured that relationships retained over long distance, without face-to-face contact do not end up in rendering the kind of support and reciprocality that typically impart to a sense of psychological security and felicity. The social features like e-mail, internet chat and other forms of networking are used more and these participants do not interact with the family members or their circle of friends to a greater extent. These directly correspond to the large amount of time they spend online. While studying the social and psychological effects of Internet users, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University detected that masses that pass even a few hours a week online undergo higher degrees of depression and loneliness than they would have if they utilized the computer network less often. Internet use seemed to induce a decline in psychological well-being of the individual. Robert Kraut thus concluded that “the subjects exhibited wide variations in all three measured effects, and while the net effects were not large, they were statistically significant in demonstrating deterioration of social and psychological life”

Today there are over 200 social networking sites with millions of registrars, linking friends, business professionals, and recruiters with employees and more. The social networking should aim at using computing technologies as catalysts rather than substitutes for human relationships. Social Networks caters to a composite and multi-perspective view on the communication world of a single individual. Social networking communities have upgraded the user profile to suit more like a user homepage that exhibits a very rich and contextual set of information. Social Networks is a lively, speedy iteration, almost rapid enough to callback spoken conversation. The rush with which messages are commuted makes it conceivable to use computer communications to supervise a project, or teach a class, or encounter new people. With practice, the computerized intermediation of such pursuits comes to be a normal part of daily life. Several social scientists made an intense study and brought about more beneficial effects of social networking but the increased use of the Internet, cause decline in normal levels of social involvement. It seemed to cause a decline in the psychological well-being of an individual, converting an individual’s lifestyle pattern, interpersonal contacts and social interaction in the social environment.

Shyamolima Mutsuddi
SEO & Content Writer

Public relation – Its essentiality and Importance

Public relations are fundamentally the art and science of establishing relationships within an organization and its key audiences. Public relations is one of the management functions that postulate supervising and assessing public attitudes and maintaining mutual relations and understanding among an organization and its public. The crucial targets of public relations are to ameliorate channels of communication and to institute new ways of setting up a two-way flow of information and understanding. Precursors into public relations were people from circuses, theatrical performances, and other public spectacles. By and by, most public relations practitioners were and are still recruited from the ranks of journalism.


The First World War provoked the development of public relations as a profession. Public relations professionals like Ivy Lee, Edward Bernays, and Carl Byoir, got their beginning with the Committee for Public Information , which organized publicity for U.S. objectives during World War I. "When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And propaganda got to be a bad word because of the Germans.. using it. So what I did was to try to find some other words, so we found the words Council on Public Relations", commented Edward Bernays, while describing the origin of the term Public Relations. At present public relations as a separate career option exist in the private or government companies and institution that feels the need to market their product, service and facilities. As the public image is important to all organizations and prominent personalities the role of public relations specialist becomes pertinent in crisis situations. The public relations agencies also provide the correct and timely transmission of information that definitely helps save the face of the organization. Public relations training courses are widespread in the educational institutes that guide students in that subject to enter a competitive job scenario. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 122,000 public relations specialists were there in the United States in 1998 and approximately 485,000 advertising, marketing, and public relations managers were working in all industries. In the words of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), "Public relations helps an organization and its publics adopt mutually to one another."

Public relations are a core phenomenon of a public relations officer as it capable him to be competent enough in the competitive jobs scenarios. Thus an effective public relations agencies benefit the program likes influencing people to attend chapter events, informing the community about the program, influencing a potential member to join the chapter, helping clear a tarnished chapter image, developing influential contacts, increasing corporate sponsorships and building name recognition.


Shyamolima Mutsuddi
SEO & Content Writer

Globalization & Ecommerce

E-commerce is the term used to describe the business activities conducted across the globe through a network service popularly known as internet. E-tailing, B2B, intranets and extranets, online advertising, advertising banners are different forms of E-commerce. E-commerce, the art and science of selling products or services over the Internet has gained its popularity in the recent times. Innumerable consumers worldwide are doing online purchase which is enhancing the demand of e-commerce enabled website for any form of business in the internet. E-commerce has overtaken communication as the driving force behind e-commerce Web developments in most of the countries across the globe.. By the year 1999, about 59% of the companies in the West were already using the web primarily for communicating with consumers, employees. The reason behind the booming investment of big and small business in web operations is the increased competition in the internet economy. In the present year it will cost around £1 million to set up a competitive ecommerce-enabled Web site in the developed countries of the west and £590,000 a year for its maintenances. The UK alone has remained an attractive market for establishing US web business. The many standalone web businesses that have flourished in UK are actually the extension of successful US business. Nowadays, the e-commerce opportunities on the Web are exploited by more than half of the business sites for selling products online in UK.

An e-commerce web site is considered as the best marketing and promotional tool to attract more customers to the site. While developing an e-commerce website for a firm, a web designer should be specific and informative about what his sites are offering. He should emphasize the functional, dynamic and attractive features on the company’s site that includes Contact forms, Product detail pages, Secure shopping cart unlimited product categories, Searchable Database, real time shipping rates, free shipping search engine and easy Customer Order Track number for further access. The potential customer will seek information about the product from the home page to make an informed decision about what that business site has to offer. A creative and innovative website of a firm will give him a distinct edge over his competitors on the internet. As the professional look and feel of the well designed web site will attract more people to his site.


Shyamolima Mutsuddi
SEO & Content Writer

Technology Audit – Utility & Importance

IT audit is a process of collecting and evaluating evidence of an organization's information systems, practices, and operations.The main purpose of Information Technology (IT) audit is to ascertain the risk to information assets and implement controls for reducing or palliating the risk. The primary aims of technology audit are to facilitate the company discover its technological needs and opportunities and serve the IRC(Internet relay chat) delineate the most advantageous services for the company. IT audit can also be called as automated data processing (ADP) audits and computer audits.

Technology audit or information technology(IT) audit basically deals with the examination of the controls inside an entity's Information technology infrastructure. Technology audit is executed together with financial statement audit, internal audit, or other form of testimonial engagement. IT audit is thus a process of collecting and evaluating evidence of an organization's information systems, practices, and operations. The evaluation of evidences obtained from technology audit guarantee the organization's information systems safeguard assets, maintains data integrity, and is operating effectively and efficiently to achieve the organization's goals or objectives. IT audit can also be called as automated data processing (ADP) audits and computer audits.

The primary aims of technology audit are to facilitate the company discover its technological needs and opportunities and serve the IRC(Internet relay chat) delineate the most advantageous services for the company.

Technology audit are subdivided into following types. System and application audit,System development audit,Audit for management of IT and enterprise architecture Audit for information processing facilities,Audit on Client/Server, Telecommunications, Intra nets,and Extra nets.

The basic information technology audit process involves planning, studying and evaluating controls, testing, reporting and doing follow-ups. Technology audit initially gathers the information of the company, examines the strength and weaknesses of the company for defining the company's innovation needs by IRC, makes a vision of where the company can come up in the next 5 to 10 years, define the strategy for attaining the company's objectives and its planned stages and define the action plan for attaining the set objectives.

The main purpose of Information Technology (IT) audit is to ascertain the risk to information assets and implement controls for reducing or palliating the risk. IT audit does critical review and judge the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of an organization's information system. At present, Information Technology (IT) auditing is speedily acquiring ground in audit teams for two reasons. First, most automated business and communications processes of an organization rely heavily on Information Technology (IT) in all aspects. Second, today, IT system stand for an appreciable budgetary allegiance virtually for all institutions and businesses.

Shyamolima Mutsuddi
cei.shyamolima @ gmail.com

Software Testing & Its Functionality

Software testing is the technical process used to recognize the correctness, completeness,security, and quality of developed computer software. Software testing is executed to display quality-related information about a tested product. Software testing is a vital part of software quality assurance.

Some of the common quality attributes of a product a tester looks for are capability, reliability, efficiency, portability, maintainability, compatibility and usability. A good test not only bring out errors, it also displays interesting informations new to a project community. Software testing play a crucial strategic role for transporting the quality of the product higher in the hierarchy in the software development process. It also underlines the customer's requirements all the way through the product cycle.

Some of the vital software testing procedures involved in testing a product are functional testing, negative testing, customer scenario testing, stress testing, performance testing, scalability testing, international testing, and more. The sole purpose of software testing is to assure that customers receive maximum product quality.

Some of the common types of testing a test engineer consider while testing a product are Black box testing,White box testing ,incremental integration testing,functional testing,

system testing,end-to-end testing,sanity testing or smoke testing,regression testing, acceptance testing,acceptance testing,performance testing,usability test,uninstall testing, recovery testing, failover testing, security testing, exploratory testing, ad-hoc testing, mutation testing and more.

Though all projects are profited from testing, some projects generally don't need independent test staff. The requirement of test stuffs depend upon the size and context of the project, the risks, the development methodology, the developer's skill and experience and more. A short term, low risk project handled by experienced programmers employing unit testing or test-first development do not need test engineers. Considering the different goals in software testing, different roles are established for software testers. They are test lead/manager, tester, test designer, test automater/automation developer and test administrator.

Author

Shyamolima Mutsuddi
SEO & Content Writer
cei.shyamolima@gmail.com