Composite Legal Expenses

The firm provides legal expenses insurance for individuals and businesses, distributed through UK insurance brokers, solicitors, and Specialist Affinity Group Schemes. Its products include legal advice for disputes or offences that a business or an individual may face, something very necessary in today’s litigious society. Composite Legal Expenses also provides UK solicitors with funding (on-line) to enable them to handle personal injury cases where the solicitor believes the injured claimant’s case has more than a 51% chance of success. Its Event Litigation Funding product (branded ELF) enables solicitors to fight such cases by providing them with funding as they incur costs (e.g. costs of expert witness reports) and with legal expenses cover included to cover the solicitors’ costs in the unlikely event the case were to be lost. The firm is the official provider of commercial legal expenses cover for the British Chambers of Commerce with its membership of over 135,000. Other key customers include the Home Office - where Legal Expenses cover is supplied to every Special Constable in the UK - and Beresfords - the leading industrial disease practice in the UK and who also franchise to other chains of solicitors with similar expertise. Earlier this year, Composite won the E-business category at the British Insurance Awards.

Origins

In 1996, a small team left AXA Insurance Group in Cardiff and established Composite Legal Expenses. The early years were extremely tough as the business had to face stiff competition from other long-established businesses. However, the team had a strong belief, determination and new ideas to build a profitable business that could deliver innovative products and services to the insurance and legal markets by taking a new approach. Since 1996, Composite has grown to become one of the UK’s major providers of legal expenses insurance and is a leading provider of event litigation funding to solicitors through its unique award-winning on-line system, ELF.

Success factors

One of the main success factors for the firm has been the identification of customer needs through extensive research and, most importantly, by listening. Composite Legal Expenses has also implemented and delivered realistic solutions to satisfy those customer needs. The firm has made significant investment in technology which has given it a very low expense base whilst providing speed of delivery to customers and through pinpointing trends in the marketplace, the firm has developed innovative insurance and funding products, combined with the creation of innovative systems that help deliver those products in unique ways.

The future?

The main aim of the company for the future is to continue to grow profitably and, rather than using insurance companies as carriers of the risks, take control of that risk for themselves. In other words, the firm aims to become an insurance company in its own right rather than rely on other parties. In this way, Composite Legal Expenses would have even stronger control over its destiny. A subsidiary company, Viking Hospitality, was recently established to capitalise on the opportunities that exist in the hospitality market, offering hospitality and related services particularly those with a sports flavour.

Sector: Legal Expenses Insurance providers

Growth: 1234.8%