Travelers: SRA to serve claim soon
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is being sued by Axiom Ince’s insurer in two sets of proceedings – and is making a claim of its own against the insurer, it emerged yesterday.
Meanwhile, the Legal Services Board (LSB) is moving closer to issuing the formal censure of the SRA over its failures in relation to SSB Group.
The news comes in the wake of yesterday’s announcement that the SRA has uncovered a “potential fraud” at PM Law group, with client money missing.
According to papers from last month’s SRA board meeting, published yesterday, in December Axiom Ince’s professional indemnity insurer, Travelers, issued two sets of proceedings alleging negligence during the period leading up to the SRA’s intervention into the firm in October 2023.
One claim is a subrogated claim on behalf of Axiom Ince, while the other joins the SRA as a defendant to a claim against Travelers brought by a former Axiom Ince client.
The claims allege the SRA breached a duty of care to Axiom Ince and/or its clients, causing losses up to £3m in the subrogated claim, which is the limit of indemnity paid by Travelers, and a damages claim in the other case of around £6m plus interest.
Separately, the SRA has issued proceedings against Travelers in a subrogated claim on behalf of clients of Axiom Ince who made claims on the SRA Compensation Fund. This could ultimately be as much as £41m.
The proceedings were issued on 31 December 2025 as a protective measure in light of limitation and the SRA has four months in which to serve the proceedings with particulars of claim.
The LSB announced last October that it would censure the SRA for its failures over SSB Group but there is a statutory process to follow and nothing has been said about it since.
However, the board papers revealed that the oversight regulatory sent a formal notice on 20 January that “it intends to issue a formal censure and direct the SRA to set and publish performance targets to address the findings of the SSB review”.
The SRA had until yesterday to submit its response.
The board was told that many of the directions “will cover areas on which we have already acted, as well as actions that we intend to take” – the SRA has been working since last May on the directions that followed the LSB’s report on Axiom Ince.
The papers said the SRA was looking to meet three “key challenges” arising from the SSB review:
- “Proactive identification of market developments that could operate against the interests of consumers or the public and swift pinpointing of key issues that require attention”;
- Targeting resources to maximise the prevention of harm to consumers; and
- “Taking action quickly to deal effectively with those who cause harm and ensuring we support vulnerable consumers throughout the process”.
Among the actions taken to date were a programme to improve decision-making in the triage team, “including new guidance, training and quality assurance measures so that the right cases are taken forward for investigation”.
It has also introduced new processes to identify and provide additional oversight of firms with multiple complaints against them and trained staff on best practice in supporting vulnerable consumers “to ensure a kind, considerate and consistent approach”.
As we reported yesterday, the SRA has also developed a ‘law firm profiler’ to provide a single-page overview of key data for every law firm.
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