I think the concern being raised is that if councils purged records, then councils would simply say they don't have roster information.  Instead, councils are saying they do have rosters, they have 5% of the claimants found, and in fact, they have so much data from rosters they don't have the man power to scan in all of the records to provide Century. Century's lawyer said in court ... so, what you are telling me, is that only 5% of claimants are showing up PLUS you have a ton of roster data (hundreds of thousands, etc.) to the point that you cannot scan them all in.  The council said yes.  Century's lawyer then said no backies when it comes confirmation time .. .the judge stepped in and said that would be hard for them to undo that statement now that they made it in court. Century made it clear.  In every case in state court, BSA would start by finding the individual in their rosters, find the offender in their rosters, perhaps even find incident reports.  They are wondering why BSA is not doing that in bankruptcy. Here is the point Century will make.  The BSA knows the majority of these claims are likely false.  Probably not 95% ... but a very high percentage (think 50 - 75%).  The BSA and councils are only offering a small dollar settlement, not because that is all they can afford (especially councils), but because they know most of the claims are false.  In addition, BSA is using the $3500 payment to buy votes from many of the false claims.  All of this is done to get a plan approved quickly with the lowest settlement they can.  However, when they are promising other companies money (such as Century) they are saying to assume all or most of the claims are real.  Century just wants to be on the same playing field as BSA ... if 75% of the claims are false, then Century only wants to talk to the 25% of the real claims.   This is why Century and other insurance companies are going after law firms and aggregators.  They know they are on the hook for claims post plan and want to clear out questionable claims prior to plan confirmation.  

Record retention laws vary not only from location to location, but also what type of record and the information on it. It can vary from 3 to 50 years, and some records longer. Our COR is a records retention guru. When we purged our records, he told us to keep everything 7 years and under. Anything 8 years or older could be purged.

A lot of the mainline Churches have sponsored Scouting for decades. As you note, many of them including our sponsor are contending with years of declining membership and face their own set of threats and challenges. We are hopeful that our 111 year relationship will survive this period. Our pastors over many years have noted that for many residents in our community, their association with and knowledge of our church came from their involvement in our Scouting programs.  Nevertheless, there is a high level of fear and trepidation among the area churches that Scouting today carries too high of a risk and the BSA is no longer a trustworthy partner.  I have been saddened by the significant loss of chartered organizations in our region in the past six months. Hopefully, your program will survive and continue to serve the youth of your community assuming that the BSA survives.

Depending on how far back they need to go, many recharters were still hand done.  That means hand written materials on carboned forms, at one time.  Reading some of our units very early charter lists is a study in patience and lots of guessing.  Printed rosters only were common going back about 25 years or less.    

The local councils and the national council have rosters of their members that are maintained.  That said, some records can be lost and a few councils have experienced fires.  Our council pays for professional storage and has for many years.  Membership fees, until very recently, all went to national so national has 'complete' rosters.  Youth can come to a few meetings without joining but being sure that everyone is covered by insurance compels units to require official membership.  Once again, in our council there are a substantial percentage where there is no record locally or nationally of membership and the claim does not list a unit ever known to have existed or accuses volunteers that likewise have no record of ever being in Scouting.  No doubt, a fraction of such claims may be legitimate, but one has to doubt that that a large fraction would be when the claim has little or no evidence that can be substantiated.   My estimation from our council would be 25% to 33% (and maybe as high as 50%) but no where close to 95% as stated.  This is just my estimation.   Seems to me that now is not the time to investigate the likely validity of the claims.  That should have been done nearly a year ago when there were allegations of poor vetting.  Everyone has proceeded based on the current number of claims.