News and analysis dedicated to the commercial litigation funding sector including regulatory issues, case developments, funding activities, and more.

 The International Legal Finance Association is pleased to announce its annual End-of-Year Gala Dinner on November 13, 2025.  The event will take place at The Law Society in London, bringing together leading figures from across the legal finance industry for an evening of celebration and reflection on the year’s achievements.  

The dinner will be accompanied by the inaugural Legal Finance Awards.  The awards are designed to recognize and honor excellence across the legal finance ecosystem. They will spotlight the achievements of funders, law firms, brokers, advisors, and other key contributors to the continued growth and innovation of the industry. Nominations for the awards are now open, with the nomination form available here. 

“The Gala Dinner is a chance for our members and guests to gather in person and celebrate the progress we’ve made over the year,” said Rupert Cunningham, Global Director of Growth and Membership Engagement at ILFA. “We are especially excited to launch the Legal Finance Awards, which will shine a light on the outstanding work and impact of professionals across our field.”

Tickets for the Gala are on sale now, with discounted pricing available for ILFA members.  More information can be found here.

Fenchurch Legal, a UK-based litigation funding specialist, today announced the launch of a structured secured lending strategy aimed at fixed-income investors seeking stable returns outside of traditional markets. With economic uncertainty challenging conventional income instruments, the firm’s high-volume consumer litigation model offers a predictable, uncorrelated alternative designed to deliver quarterly interest payments through a diversified portfolio of secured law firm loans.

As economic volatility continues to test traditional markets, a growing number of investors are turning to alternative asset classes that promise stable risk-reward profiles. Litigation funding, once considered niche, is now emerging as a mainstream alternative investment, providing secure income generation.

Fenchurch Legal, a UK-based specialist in litigation funding, is among the firms redefining  the landscape of alternative credit strategies by offering a secured, income-generating investment that is predictable and uncorrelated with traditional markets.

A Secured Lending Approach to Litigation Funding

Fenchurch Legal has structured its litigation funding offering through a secured lending model, offering investors a fixed-income product with a unique security structure designed to protect investor capital. Unlike large litigation funders who focus on a few high-value commercial cases, Fenchurch Legal funds a high volume of smaller consumer claims – including those related to financial mis-selling and mis-sold car finance. This high- volume strategy allows for broad diversification across numerous law firms and case types, helping to mitigate concentration risk and deliver consistent returns.

The predictability of this model enables investors to receive fixed, quarterly interest payments, making it an attractive option for those seeking regular income through a disciplined, secured alternative to traditional fixed-income investments.

Delivering Predictability in an Uncertain Environment

One of the most attractive features of litigation funding is its low correlation with traditional markets and macroeconomic cycles, making it particularly appealing in volatile or downturn conditions. Unlike speculative alternative assets, high-volume litigation funding offers a structured and secured approach, ideal for investors prioritizing capital preservation and low volatility. Its predictability and resilience are what set it apart, with performance driven by legal outcomes rather than market sentiment or economic indicators.

From Case Selection to Investor Returns: The Fenchurch Model in Action

Real world case examples, such as PPI or mis-sold car finance, demonstrate how funding supports access to justice while delivering predictable outcomes for investors. These well-established, protocol-driven cases highlight the tangible benefits of Fenchurch Legal’s approach.

Investor capital is pooled and deployed via secured loans to law firms, enabling them to pursue a high volume of these smaller consumer claims. These cases follow established legal protocols and have historically demonstrated repeatable outcomes. The loans are repaid by the law firms over time, with interest, regardless of individual case outcomes, all backed by After-the-Event (ATE) insurance for added downside protection. 

This risk-managed structure has allowed Fenchurch Legal to consistently deliver investors with predictable, quarterly interest payments, ideal for income focused investors. By funding thousands of low-value claims across multiple law firms, the model achieves broad diversification and reduces exposure to any single case or firm. This risk-managed approach has historically delivered competitive returns, typically ranging from 11–13% per annum — making it well-suited to income-focused portfolios.

Louisa Klouda, CEO and Founder of Fenchurch Legal, stated, “At Fenchurch Legal, we’ve designed a litigation funding model that mirrors the features fixed income investors value most — regular income, downside security, and a diversified, risk-managed portfolio.”

“In today’s economy, stability is the new growth. Litigation funding provides exactly that — it’s an asset class with low volatility, high transparency, and a compelling risk-adjusted return,” she added.

About Fenchurch Legal

Fenchurch Legal is a UK-based specialist litigation financier, providing disbursement funding to small and mid-sized law firms pursuing consumer claims where outcomes are well-established and repeatable, including housing disrepair, financial mis-selling, and undisclosed commission cases. Founded in early 2020, Fenchurch Legal was established in response to growing demand for litigation funding in the smaller consumer claims segment—an underserved area of the UK litigation finance market. In parallel, Fenchurch Legal structures litigation finance investment products designed for investors, providing exposure to a non-correlated, secured investment class.

Siltstone Capital, a leading multi-strategy alternative investment firm, is pleased to announce that Jim has joined the firm as a Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of its legal finance strategy. Jim brings extensive experience in legal finance and strategic investment management, enhancing Siltstone Capital’s capabilities in deploying sophisticated, high-value legal investment opportunities globally.

Jim previously served as the Chief Operating Officer at Westfleet Advisors and was Co-Chief Investment Officer – US at the global dispute finance company, Omni Bridgeway. In that role, he played a key role in developing the firm’s U.S. presence, co-leading its investment strategy, and building out a top-tier legal finance team. At Siltstone, Jim will utilize this extensive experience to guide investment strategy, identify high-quality opportunities, and foster team growth to achieve strong returns for investors.

Robert Le, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Siltstone Capital, stated: “We are delighted to welcome Jim to our leadership team. His deep expertise in legal finance investment strategy, combined with his proven ability to build exceptional teams, positions Siltstone strongly as we launch our next fund. Jim’s arrival marks an exciting phase for our firm, enhancing our capacity to execute sophisticated investment strategies and deliver outstanding results for our investors.”

Jim commented, “I’m excited to join the Siltstone team and collaborate closely with Robert and the outstanding professionals at Siltstone Capital. Our combined expertise positions us exceptionally well to pursue compelling investment opportunities in the global legal finance market. I look forward to leading our investment strategy and contributing to the growth and success of an excellent team at Siltstone.”

For more information about Siltstone Capital and its investment strategies, visit https://siltstonecapital.com.

Two leading litigation funders and former trial lawyers have joined forces and launched Signal Peak Partners, with a focus on commercial and patent litigation including domestic and international matters. Signal Peak offers customized litigation financing, private credit solutions, and monetization options to plaintiffs and their trial lawyers.

Signal Peak is led by co-founders and managing partners Lauren J. Harrison and Mani S. Walia. They have managed over $500 million in institutional capital, funded some of the largest judgments in the country, and practiced at preeminent law firms. From its network of trial lawyers, Signal Peak will source compelling cases to provide investors uncorrelated returns.

“I’ve had the privilege of working with the Signal Peak team for years,” said Jason Bertoldi, Global Team Leader for Litigation & Contingent Risk Insurance at Alliant Insurance Services, Inc. “They are a rare combination: elite trial lawyers and top-flight litigation funders with an unwavering commitment to delivering efficient and excellent results for their clients. Lauren and Mani are widely recognized as thought leaders, trusted partners, and expert advisors in the litigation finance industry. Signal Peak will be a tremendous asset for attorneys and plaintiffs.”

Ms. Harrison, recognized as one of Lawdragon’s “100 Global Leaders in Litigation Finance,” has over 25 years of civil litigation and litigation funding experience. She graduated magna cum laude from both Dartmouth College and Cornell Law School, where she was Articles Editor of the Cornell Law Review, and clerked for judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. She spent decades as a litigation partner at Vinson & Elkins and Jones Walker before focusing on litigation finance and serving as Vice President and Investment Counselor at Law Finance Group.

Mr. Walia has over 20 years of civil litigation and litigation funding experience. He graduated with honors from the University of Texas and with honors from the University of Texas School of Law, where he was an editor of the Texas Law Review. He clerked for judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas before litigating at Susman Godfrey.

Mr. Walia previously founded the litigation finance group at the investment firm Siltstone Capital, where his work earned him Texas Lawbook’s award for Legal Innovation in 2022. Mr. Walia is a co-author of the sixth edition of ALM’s national treatise on litigation funding.

Signal Peak is honored that Hazoor Partners, the largest investor in Mr. Walia’s prior Siltstone fund, has chosen to be an anchor investor of Signal Peak. Prior to launching its first funding strategy, Signal Peak has secured commitments of over $40 million in investment capital, with a hard-cap final close of $125 million, along with a broad investment mandate.

Ms. Harrison said that Signal Peak “will distinguish ourselves as a funder of complex litigation and will empower trial lawyers and their clients through strategic funding.” She noted that Signal Peak takes its name from the highest natural point in Texas. “We aim to bring perspective and to help our partners achieve towering success.” Of Mr. Walia she said, “Mani is a visionary who saw this industry’s potential at an early stage, and he has profound leadership skills.”

Mr. Walia said, “It is a professional dream to partner with Lauren. She’s the person I admire most in the industry. I owe my approach to case selection to my mentor Stephen D. Susman, the country’s best trial lawyer over the last 50 years and the original litigation funder, and we continue his legacy of ensuring access to justice.”

Signal Peak’s management team includes experienced litigation fund specialists Jackson Schaap as Vice President of Finance and Carly Thompson-Peters as Director of Operations. Both were formerly with Siltstone Capital.

“Lauren and I are fortunate to have Jackson and Carly join us as founding members,” Mr. Walia said. “Jackson brings elite finance acumen to valuation and portfolio construction, and Carly, with her paralegal expertise, is the nerve center of our firm.”

Signal Peak’s investment committee includes a retired federal district court judge, one of the country’s leading litigation funding law professors, and the former head of Omni Bridgeway’s Houston office.

Signal Peak invites you to attend LitFinLive, its industry conference, on February 25-26, 2026, at The Post Oak Hotel in Houston.

The following is contributed by Alberto Thomas, co-founder and managing partner of Fideres Partners LLP, an economic consulting firm specializing in litigation-related services.

Innsworth Capital’s opposition to the Competition Appeal Tribunal’s fee award in the Mastercard settlement has dominated headlines, with the litigation funder arguing that inadequate compensation threatens the future of UK class actions. But this dispute misses the fundamental issue. The real threat to collective redress isn’t judicial attitudes toward fee awards—it’s the structural limitations of how litigation funding operates.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Without structural reform, the UK class action system risks permanent ineffectiveness, leaving millions of consumers without practical access to justice while allowing corporate wrongdoing to continue unchecked. The changes proposed here would dramatically increase the volume of viable class actions, reduce funding costs, and create a genuinely functional collective redress system. Failing to act now means perpetuating a dysfunctional market where only a tiny fraction of meritorious claims ever see the light of day.

Rather than debating whether courts provide adequate compensation to funders, we should ask: why does the success of the entire UK class action regime depend on the economics of individual cases? The current model represents a classic case of capital misallocation, where resources are inefficiently concentrated rather than distributed optimally across the market.

The Flawed Foundation of Current Funding

The current model forces funders to make large, concentrated investments in individual cases while hoping their due diligence can identify certain winners. This approach is fundamentally unsound, regardless of fee awards.

Diversification is essential, but it is often impossible due to capital limitations. The UK market remains fragmented, with small funds lacking sufficient capital for diversification. Many of these funds share common investors, further exacerbating concentration problems and reducing overall market capacity. Individual class actions require millions in upfront investment over the years, so most funds can finance only a handful of class action cases simultaneously. Funders spend vast resources attempting the impossible: predicting with certainty how complex legal proceedings will unfold.

This strategy fails because litigation outcomes depend on uncontrollable variables. The Merricks case illustrates this perfectly—despite being strong on allegations of anticompetitive conduct, Innsworth’s £45 million investment produced disappointing results. This isn’t a failure of due diligence but the inherent unpredictability of litigation.

The Mathematics of Portfolio Necessity

The solution lies in recognizing that litigation funding should operate like every other investment class: through diversified portfolios designed to achieve consistent returns across aggregate investments, not individual successes.

Successful venture capital funds expect most investments to fail, some to break even, and a small percentage to generate exceptional returns that compensate for losses. The mathematics work because diversification allows the law of large numbers to operate, reducing portfolio risk while maintaining attractive returns.

Litigation funding should follow identical principles, but this requires making tens or hundreds of investments across diverse cases, jurisdictions, and legal theories.

Market Structure as the Primary Constraint

This capital limitation creates a destructive cycle that no fee restructuring can resolve. Limited diversification forces funders to be extremely selective, reducing meritorious cases that receive backing. Meanwhile, defendants observe that only the most obvious cases receive funding, escaping accountability for misconduct below this artificially elevated threshold.

The Mastercard outcome exacerbates these dynamics not because of inadequate fee awards, but because it highlights the vulnerability of concentrated portfolios. When funders experience significant losses on promising investments, rational capital allocation demands that they either exit the market or require substantially higher returns to compensate for concentration risk.

Beyond Traditional Funding Models

Solving this challenge requires moving beyond incremental reforms toward fundamental structural change. The key insight involves separating litigation risk from funding through proven approaches that have already transformed other markets.

The optimal structure would place litigation risk—the possibility that cases fail entirely—in the After-the-Event (ATE) insurance market, where specialized insurers possess deep expertise in risk assessment, diversification, and pricing across large portfolios. A fully insured investment vehicle could then access capital through traditional financial markets: banking facilities, mutual funds, pension funds, and institutional investors.

This separation would transform the economics entirely, using methods already well-established in insurance and capital markets. Insurance companies could price litigation risk using actuarial methods across diversified books of business. Meanwhile, the funding vehicle—protected by comprehensive insurance—could attract liquidity from other investment channels, such as mutual funds and the financial sector, at attractive interest rates. This type of bifurcation of  risk  would likely shorten due diligence times, significantly increase the amount of litigation funding available while simultaneously reduce its cost.

Learning from Financial Evolution

This transformation would mirror the evolution witnessed in credit markets with the development of risk transfer mechanisms like credit default swaps in the 1990s. Prior to these, banks faced severe limitations because they had to hold credit risk on their balance sheets. Risk transfer mechanisms allowed separation of credit origination from risk bearing, dramatically expanding lending capacity.

The parallels to litigation funding are exact. Currently, funders must simultaneously assess legal merit, manage litigation risk, and provide capital—constraining both capacity and efficiency. Separating these functions would deliver identical efficiency gains.

European Market Opportunities

The emergence of collective action regimes across Europe presents a significant opportunity to address these diversification challenges. As markets develop in the Netherlands, Portugal, and potentially Spain, they create additional avenues for portfolio diversification.

Rather than viewing these regimes as facing identical constraints, we should recognize their potential contribution to risk mutualization. A larger, diversified pool of cases across multiple jurisdictions would enable the portfolio approach that current market fragmentation prevents.

Time for Transformation

What’s needed is recognition that effective collective redress requires sustainable funding models built on proper risk diversification rather than case-by-case selection. This requires applying established financial approaches that separate litigation risk from funding, enabling access to the vast capital pools necessary for portfolio-scale operations.

The time has come for bold innovation in UK litigation funding—bringing entrepreneurial spirit to what the City of London does best: creating imaginative solutions to complex financial problems. The City’s unrivalled expertise in structuring sophisticated financial products and insurance markets makes it perfectly positioned to develop these new models. Such innovation would not only transform access to justice but could create an entirely new growth sector within the UK’s service economy, establishing global leadership in a rapidly evolving field.

The transformation in litigation funding won’t come from courts awarding higher fees to disappointed funders. It will come from applying the same proven structural approaches that have successfully developed every other sophisticated investment market. The question isn’t whether this transformation will occur, but whether the UK will lead it or be forced to follow others who seize this opportunity first.