Cormac Leech, CEO of AxiaFunder
AxiaFunder is an online litigation funding platform that offers flexible funding solutions to lawyers and claimants.
Traditional litigation funders are generally backed by institutional investors and therefore often have to operate within strict investment constraints. Due to their fund size and significant overheads, they usually focus on high-value claims that require at least £1 million of funding.
AxiaFunder operates as a litigation funding platform sourcing capital from a large number of professional, high net worth and sophisticated retail investors. As a result, AxiaFunder is able to spread risk and offer low cost flexible funding solutions to claimants in a timely manner:
Flexible funding amount
As a litigation funding platform, AxiaFunder has no minimum investment size requirement mandated by our investors and relatively low operational costs due to our remote operating model. This enables AxiaFunder to fund smaller cases requiring up to £1 million of funding –that would be too small for most other funders. We can also bundle very small cases together and fund them as a portfolio — an approach that works well when the same law firm is involved for all the cases.
Flexible use of funds
In contrast to traditional litigation funders who restrict their operations to funding legal costs only, AxiaFunder can provide funding for more flexible uses. For example, we recently provided funding to a claims management company to finance the book building of claims.
We can also enable claimants to get reimbursed some of their previously incurred expenses or provide some preliminary funding to cover some necessary costs ahead of the main litigation process, for example, funding initial legal opinion or valuation report.
Where appropriate, we can also allocate some working capital for small businesses to stay afloat during the often-lengthy litigation process. How to use the funds are, of course, subject to an agreement between the funder and the funded party.
Flexible case selection
We can be more flexible in terms of our case selection process itself. AxiaFunder can fund higher risk claims provided the pricing is attractive for our investors. We can fund cases in international jurisdictions. Recently, we funded a copyright infringement claim in Spain. We see considerable potential in funding cases overseas where the litigation funding market is typically less developed than in the UK. We can also fund cases that might take a relatively long time to resolve, provided that the longer duration is reflected in the transaction pricing.
Fast assessment
Our target turnaround time is 1-2 months from the initial enquiry to confirmation that we will source funding on our platform. The actual platform funding can take a further 4 weeks. This of course is subject to the funding application and case supporting documents being well presented to us initially and the absence of any material gaps. If it becomes clear to us that we are not able to fund the case for whatever reason, we will immediately let the parties know.
To find out more information about AxiaFunder and funding a claim, please visit: https://www.axiafunder.com/, or contact Cormac Leech at cormac@axiafunder.com.
