The Ignite team includes Jamie Molloy and Byron Sumner in the UK, and Ankit Patel and Nicole Silver in the U.S.
Between heavy legal fees, the rising costs of document production, preparation, specialists, court fees and mounds of other considerations – litigation is more expensive than ever. For most, prohibitively so. But justice was never meant to service only those with the means to procure it. That is where Ignite Specialty Risk comes into the picture – an innovative company born of a serious marketplace gap that offers an elite suite of services designed to reshape the litigation insurance landscape.
The company helps litigants access justice by providing insurance products to law firms and capital providers that help ease the burden of financing costly litigation, in turn, enabling parties to achieve efficient and just results. The team is guided and galvanized by Ignite’s central philosophy – litigation does not have to be a liability. If one looks at meritorious litigation as a distressed asset, rather than inevitably painful and expensive, there's an opportunity for investment that, when properly vetted and structured, can produce significant returns and just outcomes.
Nicole Silver, Ignite’s Lead Underwriter and Head of U.S. Operations, believes Ignite's products hold much more value than simply de-risking litigation.
“Litigation insurance allows companies to reinvest in their own core operations,” says Silver. “It allows them to focus on what they do best – offering products and services to clients – rather than expending costs on protracted litigations.”
The Ignite team was intentionally built with their diverse specialties in mind – collectively, the team has backgrounds in insurance, litigation, finance and intellectual property. They work together to deliver creative, tailored solutions for clients across a broad spectrum of industries. Always bespoke, always client focused.
After a successful UK launch in 2022, Ignite brought Silver on to spearhead their U.S. initiative in 2024. Silver brings over 20 years of experience as a litigator, having previously worked at Winston & Strawn and Greenberg Traurig. On Silver’s team stateside is Head of IP Underwriting, Ankit Patel.
“In the U.S., litigation insurance is rapidly evolving – from single-risk M&A-related coverage to portfolio-based policies marketed directly to clients and law firms,” says Patel. “It’s becoming an essential tool for litigation risk management and attracting more mainstream investor interest.”
The U.S. and the UK markets are distinctly different – each with their own unique drivers – and Ignite Specialty Risk is leading innovation in both regions, for different reasons. In the UK, Ignite operates as a nimble, specialized Managing General Agent (MGA), bringing underwriting skill and speed to a more mature market with a longstanding cost-shifting framework. In the U.S., litigation insurance is a fresher concept and Ignite is building a marketplace model, with a focus on innovation and client education. They’re introducing portfolio-based WIP (work in progress) insurance for contingency firms and tailoring products to help clients access better financing.
“Stateside, our products are primarily geared towards commercial litigation portfolios,” says Jamie Molloy, Co-founder and Head of Ignite’s After The Event (ATE) Insurance team. “In the UK, we have a greater focus on single risks – it's a different landscape.”
Our philosophy really is if we like a piece of meritorious litigation, let's de-risk it in as many ways as we possibly can.
Molloy alongside Byron Sumner, Ignite’s CEO and co-founder, has had a hand in developing their innovative financial products from the beginning. They saw a need in the market and built Ignite precisely to fill that gap.
“Ignite was built deliberately to serve the legal expenses market as we do today,” says Sumner. “That’s been our vision from day one – and it still is. We’re here for the long term, and we’ve built a platform around that commitment.”
Lawdragon sat down with the Ignite team to talk about the exciting and burgeoning industry of litigation insurance, where the industry is headed and why Ignite is primed to stay on top.
Lawdragon: Tell me about the financial products that Ignite offers.
Jamie Molloy: Our philosophy really is if we like a piece of meritorious litigation, let's de-risk it in as many ways as we possibly can. Ignite hasn’t just sold existing products – we’ve created them. So whilst historically in the UK, litigation insurance has been limited to adverse cost insurance because we have this “loser pays” rule, Ignite has been instrumental in creating capital protection insurance products. We provide cover for own solicitor’s fees, Insolvency Practitioner’s fees, and for more unique legal actions, like freezing injunctions, which we regularly get in the UK.
We now have the widest range of product offerings in UK and Europe for all stakeholders in the litigation value chain. We're also the only insurer in the UK that is underwriting both big-ticket class action work in the Competition Appeal Tribunal, as well as consumer-led work in the local county courts situated around England and Wales. This affords us excellent oversight, a real bird's eye view as to what's going on in the litigation sector.
LD: So, you were reacting to a need in the market for these insurance products?
Byron Sumner: Yes, but it wasn’t just about the availability of insurance. It was about how it was being delivered. In the UK and Europe, we offer the broadest product suite of any litigation insurer, something we’re genuinely proud of. That breadth reflects a mature market shaped by decades of cost-shifting and adverse costs exposure. But product alone isn’t enough. What clients and intermediaries consistently tell us they value most is service: fast turnaround times, intelligent structuring, candid advice on risk – and conversations with actual litigation insurance experts, not just generalist financial lines underwriters.
When we launched in the U.S. in 2024, we took a different stance. We saw the chance to reshape the market by building something better: a model based on strategic growth, innovation and real client alignment. Ignite was designed to meet those expectations from day one. We’re the speedboat in the harbor – fast, focused and built for this niche. That translates into better outcomes for clients, and into participation on high-quality risks that deliver underwriting profit for our insurance partners.
JM: Litigation ultimately is a form of distressed asset. If you ask anybody involved with litigation, they see it as a challenge with significant financial burden and emotional drain. Litigation finance is one such tool that helps mitigate that, but it's also at a significant cost. The litigation insurance products we're offering provide effectively the same net outcome as litigation funding, but it's a better value cost to the ultimate payee, which is the litigant or the law firm.
Litigation has become so expensive and law firms are requiring scale that even traditional funders cannot meet. Our product helps to deal with the economic need that law firms, lawyers and clients are facing as they pursue litigation.
LD: Can you speak to how the need arose in the U.S. market?
Nicole Silver: Litigation has become so expensive and law firms are requiring scale that even traditional funders cannot meet. Our product helps to deal with the economic need that law firms, lawyers and clients are facing as they pursue litigation. In the U.S., we offer portfolio-based WIP insurance for contingency-fee firms, helping them manage risk and access better financing terms.
Ankit Patel: What we are trying to do within the U.S. is to reduce the cost of capital associated with litigation. Traditional lenders do not have the specialty to underwrite litigation risk and insure or lend against litigations. Where Nicole and I add value is bringing our litigation expertise as a component of underwriting to help reduce the cost of capital that may be needed to put out a loan that the law firms or our ultimate clients will procure.
LD: Can you talk about how the role of your company – and legal funding insurance in general – has evolved since they first came on the scene?
JM: Litigation insurance has been around longer than funding in the UK. During the ’90s, the UK government wanted to shift the cost of civil legal aid off taxpayers and onto third parties, leading to the rise of No Win, No Fee arrangements and ATE insurance in 2000. What began as a public access-to-justice tool has evolved into a commercial product now used by everyone from impecunious individuals to sophisticated corporates looking to de-risk litigation.
Litigation is a financial headache no matter who you are – but at Ignite, we see it differently. We view litigation as a distressed asset with real potential value at the end. In the U.S., where cost shifting never existed, legal expenses insurance didn’t naturally develop, but we saw the gap and built tailored products to fit that system. It’s not off-the-shelf; it’s built with vision, and it works.
LD: When did corporates start using these products?
JM: From approximately 2009 onwards. Back then, I recall insuring large corporations who had the means to run the litigation, but they deemed it more sensible to buy a product and hedge their risk of that product and share in the proceeds of the litigation with us rather than just take the risk themselves.
NS: Both litigation funding and insurance allow companies to reinvest in their own core products. They're not taking money out, entering into risky propositions, pursuing litigation and spending money that detracts from what they would otherwise be doing. It allows them to focus on their core business and profit from that exponentially more than if they were taking that same money and channeling it into litigation. It's thus such an important product that is beneficial for both companies and law firms to know about and utilize.
AP: From a U.S. perspective, this is a relatively new market. Over the past five years, the product has evolved significantly. In the U.S., litigation insurance is rapidly evolving – from single-risk M&A-related coverage to portfolio-based policies marketed directly to law firms. It’s becoming an essential tool for litigation risk management and attracting more interest from mainstream investors. With the industry shifting over the last year, the product offerings in the U.S. market are still evolving, and I think we’re going to see some new entrants and innovations in the near future.
JM: The challenge for anyone in our shoes is not just designing these products, but it's also the education piece. The UK market is far more down the chain in terms of establishing itself than the U.S. market. It's incumbent upon us as thought leaders to educate people who may benefit from our offerings.
This is a really bespoke line of insurance. Each of our policies are heavily negotiated with the client and their advisors to deliver what is a very tailored insurance solution.
LD: How did each of you come to this work?
NS: I'm a lawyer by trade. I practiced for close to 19 years in Big Law. I started my career at Winston & Strawn, then went over to Greenberg Traurig. I am a litigator and my focus was mostly international arbitration, but I did some product liability defense work as well. Prior to coming to Ignite, I worked at a litigation finance company for about a year and a half, and then I came over to the insurance side. I'm very happy I made the move.
AP: I started my career as a patent litigator at Gibbons P.C. and practiced there for a few years. In 2016, I had an opportunity to help launch an IP offering at Ambridge Partners LLC, a well-known transactional risk MGA. That’s where I was introduced to the world of insurance. I launched an IP insurance product offering in the U.S., UK and EMEA and assisted in underwriting transactional risk along with contingent risk – which was quite limited at the time. In 2022, I made the move to Liberty Mutual to exclusively focus on contingent risk, and earlier this year made the move to join Ignite.
LD: Jamie and Byron, you’re both co-founders. Can you tell us about your path to this work?
JM: I left school and chose to go into law. I took what's called a CILEX qualification in the UK and then basically tried to get any job in the legal sector I possibly could. I ended up working for a litigation insurer based in Gibraltar, underwriting and managing portfolios of personal injury claims. Whilst working there I undertook a bachelor's degree in law and subsequently a master's degree in law, both on the weekend – which took seven or eight years. By the time I'd concluded my master's, I decided that legal practice would've been far more boring for me than the opportunity this work presents. I worked at an MGA in the early 2010s, underwriting some patent litigation in the U.S. and a significant volume of litigation in the UK. I moved to another MGA in 2017 and set up their commercial team and then was approached in late 2021 to set up Ignite alongside Byron and Dave [Green]. I just really liked the philosophy of what they were doing. I've now been writing litigation insurance for 18 years, across High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court, Competition Appeal Tribunal matters, and now obviously Europe. It’s such a challenging but rewarding opportunity because we are at the forefront of an industry that only has really existed since the early 2000s. We like to think we are very much the pioneers of it.
BS: I studied finance and started out at a Lloyd’s syndicate 1200, working on alternative capital strategies. It gave me early exposure to how capital is structured and deployed in insurance, from reserving dynamics to debt and equity. I later moved into risk modelling, working closely on delegated authority portfolios at Argo and later A&H statistical analytics at Chubb Europe. That gave me a strong grounding in the technical side of insurance, something that still shapes how I think about pricing and portfolio management today. At Aon, I was introduced to the venture and risk capital ecosystem that underpins the MGA model, and to After-the-Event insurance, which struck me as a fragmented and underserved space. From there, I joined a team to build out casualty treaty business at Ardonagh, before teaming up with David Green to develop a more focused ATE underwriting platform. Jamie joined us soon after, and we raised private equity capital to launch Ignite in March 2022.
LD: What advice would you all have for parties that are looking to engage a litigation insurer maybe for the first time?
JM: We need to wake people up to realize that litigation finance exists – but so does litigation insurance, and it can deliver the same outcome at a fraction of the cost. The real solution is bringing finance and insurance minds together, recognizing that litigation isn’t just a headache – it’s an asset class. It might start out messy, but by the end, it’s polished and valuable. It’s still a young market, and at Ignite, we’re leading it with the biggest, best product lines – they really do speak for themselves.
What sets us apart is our combination of technical credibility and execution. We’ve supported around $2B in litigation capital across the U.S., UK and EU, but we’ve retained the agility and precision of a specialist platform.
LD: And what about on the U.S. side? Any advice for people thinking for the first time they might want litigation insurance?
NS: The reason for obtaining litigation insurance is generally so that you will be able to obtain better financing for loans that you may be seeking. Having an insurance policy in place helps you to get better financial terms. It also unlocks a different class of investors who may be more similar to a credit fund or a family office or a pension fund, somebody who, with the possibility of using the policy as collateral, can then lend against that policy. So it is there to help facilitate transactions and to be used as a financial instrument.
AP: I think it’s important to not think of us as traditional insurers in the U.S. who write on an admitted basis. This is a really bespoke line of insurance. Each of our policies are heavily negotiated with the client and their advisors to deliver what is a very tailored insurance solution. We are specialists and we help deliver a solution on behalf of our panel of insurers.
Separately, I think I would advise the clients to be as forthcoming with information as possible. Oftentimes when we get a submission, we read it and we ask ourselves, "What is the need for insurance?” There are limit requests that don't make sense, there are case merits that don't make sense, and there are stories that don’t always align. And the point is to really trust the people you're working with. If we are questioning, what is the purpose or why are they seeking certain limits, that makes us have doubt as to what that portfolio consists of or what the merits are, and that delays – or sometimes entirely derails – the process of issuing the policy. We only issue policies that make sense in the overall context.
LD: Your team is really at the forefront here. Where is this industry headed?
NS: Litigation insurance is evolving quickly, especially in the U.S., where it’s moving from boutique firms to top Am Law 100 players. The key challenge is education – helping firms and investors understand how insurance can reduce risk and unlock new capital.
JM: We are, as an industry, in the very early days of the development of our product and our marketplace. Inevitably, as time moves on and as awareness grows, so will product adoption. By creating insurance solutions, we can de-risk litigation and attract a broader range of investors beyond traditional hedge funds. Ultimately, our goal is to expand access to justice by making litigation more financially viable for more people.
It's going to become more commonplace and be used by more law firms, including Big Law firms, particularly as they develop their plaintiff-side practices.
LD: What makes Ignite stand out in the market?
BS: Ignite was built to serve a specialist segment: exposures driven by legal uncertainty. That includes adverse costs, own costs, enforcement risk, and portfolio-level capital protection, a class of contingent risk we understand deeply.
What sets us apart is our combination of technical credibility and execution. We’ve supported around $2B in litigation capital across the U.S., UK and EU, but we’ve retained the agility and precision of a specialist platform. That means clients get speed, structuring input, and direct conversations with underwriters who not only understand the risk, but also appreciate the commercial drivers behind why these products are purchased in the first place.
In the U.S., we currently offer the largest capacity of any litigation insurer, with the ability to insure limits north of $100M on a single portfolio. That scale, paired with our underwriting track record, puts us at the forefront of the market. As the market evolves, we’re helping define it, alongside clients, brokers, partners and competitors, raising the bar.
