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Legal Finance ABS for Institutional Investors: Market Securities Expands Offering

By Celso Filho |

Legal Finance ABS for Institutional Investors: Market Securities Expands Offering

The following article was contributed by Celso Filho, Global Head of Special Projects at Market Securities, and co-founder and CEO of Rachel AI.

Life insurers and other institutional investors face a structural allocation challenge: securing sufficient volumes of rated, long-duration, yield-bearing assets to match long-tail liabilities. Public investment-grade bond markets remain large, but they do not consistently provide the spread, structure, or customization required. As a result, insurers have steadily increased allocations to private placements, asset-backed securities, and other forms of private credit.

According to Milliman’s 2026 analysis of NAIC statutory filings, private bonds now account for approximately 46% of U.S. life insurers’ bond portfolios — up from 29% a decade ago — reflecting a sustained and accelerating shift toward alternative sources of yield and duration. The trend is sharpest among PE-owned life insurers, where structured securities account for approximately 49% of total bonds — underscoring how deeply the search for rated, yield-bearing paper has become embedded in the asset allocation strategies of the most capital-active players in the sector.

Market Securities is addressing that demand by bringing to market asset-backed securities backed by legal finance receivables, including pre-settlement plaintiff advances and receivables linked to contingent fee arrangements with law firms. These assets introduce a distinct return profile driven by legal case cash flows rather than traditional corporate credit cycles, and they can be structured into rated securitizations suitable for institutional portfolios.

The opportunity is crystallizing across three investor tiers — each approaching the asset class from a different angle, but converging on the same structure and, together, driving the institutionalization of legal finance.

  1. Insurers and other rated-mandate investors represent the largest pool of demand. Operating within strict capital and rating constraints, they allocate to investment-grade instruments at 125 to 200 basis points over Treasuries and can deploy hundreds of millions per transaction. Their participation defines the scale of the opportunity — and creates the demand for rated, structured exposure that legal finance ABS is uniquely positioned to meet.
  2. Private credit managers, sovereign wealth funds, and large family offices occupy the senior and mezzanine tranches, targeting enhanced yield with structural protections. Unlike insurers, these investors are not dependent on ratings and underwrite assets directly, focusing on risk-adjusted returns, structure, and downside protection. They provide the capital depth required to scale transactions and anchor issuance.
  3. Specialist legal finance investors sit in the junior and equity tranches, underwriting legal risk directly and targeting returns in excess of 25%. These investors take first-loss positions, pricing legal risk at the asset level — and for them, securitization offers a compelling strategic advantage: lower cost of capital and greater leverage availability than traditional fund formation, particularly relevant in today’s challenging fundraising environment.

These tiers are complementary rather than competitive. Rated investors bring scale and duration demand; private credit and sovereign capital provide flexible, non-rating-constrained liquidity; and specialist managers contribute underwriting expertise and first-loss alignment. Securitization is the architecture that aligns them — converting legal finance receivables into a format that institutional capital can size, rate, and deploy against.

Market Securities sees this convergence as structural rather than cyclical, and legal finance ABS as the mechanism through which it becomes permanent.

Celso Filho, CFA, CAIA is Global Head of Special Projects at Market Securities, based in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). He is also co-founder and CEO of Rachel AI, a London-incorporated litigation finance technology and analytics platform. Celso began his career as a lawyer, practising for seven years before transitioning into investment banking and specialty finance, with prior roles at Citigroup and Credit Suisse. He holds an MBA from INSEAD.

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Celso Filho

Celso Filho

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Nera Capital Secures £75 Million Funding Commitment for UK, EU and US Investment

Nera Capital has secured a new £75 million funding commitment, capital the litigation funder will deploy across three strategic initiatives spanning the United Kingdom, continental Europe and the United States.

According to a press release from Nera Capital, the commitment reflects the firm's focus on financing claims with strong legal merit and substantial economic impact, and reinforces investor confidence in the litigation finance sector.

A significant portion of the capital will support a growing portfolio of personal injury claims in the United States, where Nera Capital continues to expand through partnerships with specialist American law firms. The investment is intended to provide claimant firms with the capital required to pursue those cases efficiently, while helping injured individuals access justice without bearing the cost of lengthy litigation.

The funding will also be allocated to one of Europe's largest competition litigation matters — a €12 billion antitrust claim in Portugal. The claim is expected to involve thousands of businesses and consumers affected by alleged anti-competitive conduct, with the financing covering the legal costs required to progress the case through the Portuguese courts.

In the United Kingdom, part of the new capital is dedicated to the next phase of motor vehicle finance litigation following the Court of Appeal decision in Angel v Black Horse. That judgment confirmed that large volumes of claims can proceed using omnibus claim forms, improving procedural efficiency for claimant firms pursuing undisclosed commission claims. Nera Capital is working with leading claimant firms to finance those omnibus strategies, providing disbursement funding and operational support to manage claims at scale.

A spokesperson for Nera Capital said the commitment "demonstrates continued investor confidence in both our underwriting model and the long-term opportunities within Nera and litigation finance," citing exceptional demand across multiple jurisdictions. "Our role is to provide law firms with the financial resources they need to pursue meritorious claims, allowing individuals and businesses to access justice irrespective of their financial circumstances."

Established in 2011 and headquartered in Dublin with offices in Manchester and the Netherlands, Nera Capital is a member of the European Litigation Funders Association.

UK Litigation Funding Market Remains in Limbo as Reform Continues to Stall

Nearly three years after the Supreme Court's PACCAR ruling upended the enforceability of litigation funding agreements, the UK market is still waiting for the legislative fix that was meant to restore certainty — and practitioners warn the delay is now carrying a measurable cost.

As reported by Freeths, the Civil Justice Council has already recommended legislative reform, but the government has yet to act on those recommendations. The resulting vacuum has left funders, claimant firms and institutional investors operating without a settled framework.

The commentary identifies capital flight as the most immediate consequence. Panelists observed that jurisdictions such as Australia offer the regulatory clarity and predictable frameworks that institutional investors require, and that capital naturally gravitates toward those markets while the UK position remains unresolved.

Uncertainty also raises transaction costs. Without a clear statutory basis for funding agreements, parties are forced into more complex structuring arrangements to achieve the same commercial result. For lower-value claims in particular, that added friction can render a case economically unviable — precisely the outcome funding is intended to prevent.

The access-to-justice dimension features prominently in the analysis. With civil legal aid substantially reduced, litigation funding has become the practical mechanism through which large-scale claims reach court. The Post Office Horizon litigation is cited as the clearest illustration of funded claims exposing injustice that would otherwise have gone unremedied.

The recommended path forward is swift, "light touch" regulatory reform — a framework sufficient to restore confidence in the enforceability of funding agreements without constraining innovation in how claims are financed.

The broader concern is competitive. As global disputes work becomes increasingly mobile, the analysis concludes that continued inaction places the UK's standing as a leading international disputes hub at risk.

Survey Finds Legal Clients Accept AI for Simple Queries but Not Sensitive Matters

Consumers are increasingly willing to interact with artificial intelligence when contacting a law firm, but that comfort drops sharply once the conversation turns complex or personal, according to new survey data.

According to figures published by Bristol Law Society, the research was commissioned by customer conversation company Moneypenny and conducted by Censuswide among 2,000 UK consumers between June 8 and June 10, 2026. It examined how receptive people are to AI when dealing with different types of businesses, including legal providers.

Where law firms are concerned, willingness tracks closely with the simplicity of the task. Some 29% of respondents said they would be happy using AI for an initial enquiry and 28% for completing a questionnaire. That figure falls to 22% for receiving a case update and 17% for settling a bill. A substantial 38% said they would not be happy using AI for any legal-related communications at all.

The survey also found pronounced generational and gender divides. Among Baby Boomers, 51% rejected AI for any legal communications, as did 44% of Gen X, compared with 28% of Millennials and 26% of Gen Z. More women than men expressed reluctance, at 43% versus 33%.

Bernadette Bennett, Head of Legal at Moneypenny, said the results point away from a uniform approach. "The best customer experiences will be achieved by blending both tech and human communications seamlessly, with AI handling simple queries quickly and efficiently, but deferring consumers to a real person for sensitive issues," she said.