Founded in 2010, Prime Case Funding is a New York based full-service legal finance firm. The Originator has funded plaintiffs in all 50 states and considers itself active in 33 states. The Originator’s origination strategy focuses on developing and maintaining personal relationships with attorneys and offers competitive industry rates with underwriting turnaround time of 24 hours from receipt of case documentation. Furthermore, the Originator’s philosophy emphasizes customer service, with a team of account executives serving as dedicated points of contact for each case and active involvement by the Principals. As of April 2019, the Originator has funded over 14,000 plaintiff advances for a total of $80.5M.
The Originator has designed and developed policies and procedures to review and analyze prospective funding requests involving outstanding personal injury claims or other lawsuits that have not yet settled. The Originator’s underwriting process includes a review of case documentation and an interview with the handling attorney to evaluate the case across four key attributes:
Upon review of all information gathered, the lead underwriter renders a decision to approve or decline the funding request based on an opinion of the case’s likelihood to settle, the estimated settlement amount and the time to settle. Any funding request over $15k is escalated to the Chief Operating Officer, who renders the final decision.
If approved for funding, the Originator verifies that the case remains unencumbered, and a funding agreement is drawn alongside a suite of security documentation to ensure plaintiff and attorney’s acknowledgement of the advance and payment procedures.
The Originator has developed a proprietary enterprise software which processes each case from initial intake to closing. All case information and documentation are entered into the system which allows for efficient inter-department collaboration and tracking of funding at each stage of the funding’s lifecycle. Post-funding, the Originator services its active advances internally. It is responsible for the case management, risk management and cash management functions:
An analysis of the Originator’s closed advances was performed as of April 2019. The Originator has had 10,039 advances close, which represents $51.4M of funding and $71.7M of collections. As such, the multiple of invested capital (referred to as MOIC and calculated as Amount Collected divided by Amount Funded) for closed advances was 1.40x which means that if an advance closed, for every $1.00 funded, the Originator received $1.40 in return. The time to settlement for the Originator’s closed advances was on average 12.7 months, which in consideration of the MOIC, represents a closed advance internal rate of return (IRR) of 37.6%. It is important to note that the discussed metrics only consider closed advances and do not consider advances that are currently considered active and ongoing.
Historical Performance
Mr. Goldenberg has served as Chief Executive Officer of the Originator since inception. Prior to founding the Originator, he had over 10 years of experience in capital markets investing, risk management, corporate finance and technology. He leads the Originator’s financial and controller functions and directly oversees investor reporting and accounting. In addition, Mr. Goldenberg was instrumental in the development of the Originator’s proprietary enterprise software and continues to manage the company’s technology infrastructure.
Mr. Shleyger has served as Chief Operating Office of the Originator since inception. He leads the Originator’s sales and marketing, operations and human resources functions. Prior to founding the Originator, he had 15 years of experience in investments, sales and marketing. In 2004, he founded I&E Imperial Realty, a real estate brokerage firm where he managed 20 real estate agents, and prior to founding I&E Imperial Realty, he served as an Account Executive at Gruntal & Co, a NY-based retail brokerage firm, where he managed $28.5M in investments.