AxiaFunder
Website User and Investor Terms and Conditions
1. The AxiaFunder service
1.1 AxiaFunder is a trading name of Champerty Limited (FRN 968527), which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. References in these Terms and Conditions to “AxiaFunder”, "we", "us" and "our", are to Champerty Limited.
1.2 The AxiaFunder service is available to investors that become members through our website www.axiafunder.com (the “Website”). We provide members with details of potential investments, such as bonds and shares issued by companies (“Issuers”) established for purposes of funding one or more litigation cases. Some of these cases may already be pre-funded before reaching the platform, in which case the purpose of the investment on the platform will be to refinance this pre-funding. The details of the investment structure and the underlying litigation funding arrangements will be set out in the relevant Information Memorandum on our Website.
1.3 The investments on this website are intended for Sophisticated and High Net Worth Investors as defined by the FCA. For individual investors, this entails making a declaration that the investor is a high net worth individual or is sophisticated in investing, or has received advice from an authorised firm. Non-advised investors must demonstrate their understanding of the features and risks of investing. Investors who satisfy these criteria, as set out in more detail on the Website, will be eligible to become “members”. Only members can receive investment offers through the Website.
1.4 If you are eligible for membership, you can invest online and receive online investment reports. Your investment subscriptions and any investment returns shall be held by ShareIn in a client bank account pursuant to clause 4. ShareIn is a party to these Terms and Conditions.
1.5 We and ShareIn will treat all members as retail clients for the purposes of the Financial Conduct Authority's rules (retail clients receive the highest degree of regulatory protections under those rules).
1.6 As a member of AxiaFunder, you are bound by these Terms and Conditions in relation to your use of our Website and your participation in investment opportunities. Users of the Website who are not members are also bound by these terms insofar as they are capable of application to non-members. By using the Website, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to these Terms and Conditions and our Privacy and Cookies Policy each as amended from time to time. If you do not agree to the Terms and Conditions, you must stop using the Website immediately.
2. Membership
2.1 We make details of investment opportunities available to all users of our Website, but only members are able to apply to invest or view investment offers in the Investments area when they have logged into their online account.
2.2 In order to become a member of AxiaFunder, you will need to apply to join and be approved by us. We reserve the right to reject applications on such grounds as we see fit, including, without limitation, your knowledge and understanding of investing, your financial status, your capacity to be bound by these Terms and Conditions or the jurisdiction in which you live or are a citizen.
2.3 If you apply to become a member, we will carry out identity and fraud checks on you, using third party agencies. We use our own internal guidelines and policies when assessing applications but retain complete discretion. If we cannot get adequate information from the third-party agency then we will ask you to send us copies of the relevant identification documents (normally a certified copy of your passport and a utility bill) and any supporting evidence that we may require. If you do not provide all appropriate identification documents you will not be able to invest. We may also suspend your membership at any time if we believe it is appropriate in order to comply with our legal obligations. For more details about how we use your information, please refer to our Privacy and Cookies Policy.
2.4 Provided that we accept your application to become a member, you will then be able to view the investment offers available through the AxiaFunder Website.
2.5 Your application for membership should be completed in the name of the same person that will invest.
2.6 You will be required to provide personal details and a password to register as a member, which are unique to your individual AxiaFunder membership and are not transferable. Your registration details and password are how we identify you and you must keep them secure at all times.
2.7 You are responsible for all information and activity on the Website by anyone using your details. If you authorise an agent, family member, employee, or sub-contractor to use AxiaFunder account you will be responsible for their activity on the Website. Any breach of security, loss, theft, or unauthorised use of your security details must be notified to us immediately. We reserve the right not to act on your instructions where we suspect that the person logged into your AxiaFunder account is not you or we suspect illegal or fraudulent activity or unauthorised use.
2.8 You agree not to adapt or circumvent the systems in place in connection with the Website, nor access our systems other than by using the credentials assigned to you and by following the instructions that we have provided for that type of connection.
3. Buying investments
3.1 If you wish to subscribe for an investment, you will need to specify the size of the investment you wish to make and place funds in your AxiaFunder account.
3.2 Whether we choose to accept your application to invest will be at our absolute discretion, even if you are a member and satisfy our eligibility criteria, for example, but without limitation, because the offer is over-subscribed or under-subscribed or because of legal or regulatory matters. The allocation policy for each investment is based on a first-come-first-served basis, by reference to the time we receive your subscription payment. If it is not possible to allocate investments to you, we may hold your subscription for participation in a subsequent issue of like investments, although you will be entitled to request to have your unallocated subscription monies returned to you until they have been committed.
3.3 All investments will be governed by the terms of the investment documentation you are required to acknowledge as part of your application to invest, such as the Bond Instrument, the Issuer's Articles of Association; the information you provide as part of your online application; the Information Memorandum; and these Terms and Conditions. To the extent that there are any inconsistencies between these documents, the provisions of any document that is specific to the investment you are making shall prevail over these Terms and Conditions.
3.4 We do not provide investment advice, legal advice, or tax advice. In particular, we will not assess the suitability of an investment in light of your personal circumstances and you are responsible for making your own investment decisions. If you are in any doubt as to your own personal circumstances, you should seek such advice from an appropriately qualified professional.
3.5 We will not facilitate investment where we are aware that it is illegal, although it is your responsibility to ensure that you have complied with any relevant legal or regulatory restrictions that would prohibit you from investing.
3.6 If you wish to hold bonds within an Innovative Finance ISA, the holding of those investments will be subject to separate terms and conditions with the ISA manager, in addition to these Terms and Conditions. In the event of conflict, the provisions of the ISA Terms and Conditions will prevail.
4. How your money and investments are held
4.1 If we accept your application to make an investment, we will provide you with bank account details into which you must transfer your subscription amount (your “AxiaFunder account”) within 24 hours of receipt of these details unless you notify us otherwise. Payment must be made by transfer linked to a bank account in your name whose details you provide to us and which we have accepted (your “Nominated Account”), into your AxiaFunder account, where subscriptions will be held pending investment.
4.2 Your application will constitute a legal commitment to invest, but you may cancel your application at any time prior to the investment being issued without penalty. If you fail to make payment within 24 hours or the date you have specified, ShareIn may, at its discretion, cancel your subscription. If you make payment after the due date and an allocation is still available, ShareIn will, unless it notifies you to the contrary, continue to process your payment as an indication that you wish to proceed to invest.
4.3 The AxiaFunder account will be held by and administered by ShareIn as a client account which is maintained separately from ShareIn's own money in accordance with the rules of the Financial Conduct Authority. ShareIn will make payments to and receive them from Issuers on your behalf. ShareIn maintains records of the individual entitlements of each investor and Issuer for these purposes.
4.4 If the fundraising target is met and the investment proceeds, investments issued by Issuer will be allocated to you in value equal to the entire amount or a fraction of the amount of subscription that you requested and funded. ShareIn shall arrange for your investments to be issued to you by paying the subscription amount from your AxiaFunder account to the Issuer and the corresponding investments shall be registered in your name. Any of your subscription which is not allocated to investments will be kept in your AxiaFunder account pending your instructions.
4.5 ShareIn will pay any fees owing to AxiaFunder, itself and other services providers (if any) out of the relevant account. AxiaFunder shall not be responsible for the discharge of ShareIn's obligations in respect of holding client money under these Terms and Conditions.
4.6 We or another person selected by us may take over control of the AxiaFunder account at any time provided that we or they have appropriate regulatory permissions to hold client money and you authorise ShareIn to transfer any monies it holds for you in the AxiaFunder account to us or to such other person upon our instructions in those circumstances without seeking your express instruction to do so. We will notify you of any such transfer through your dashboard on the Website.
4.7 Your investments will generally have limited voting rights attached to them, but any voting rights you have will be set out in the relevant Information Memorandum.
4.8 You may request any of your cash that has not been allocated to an investment, including investment returns, to be paid back into your Nominated Account. If you wish to change your Nominated Account, you may request to do so by email, providing us with your proposed alternative account. Any alternative account must be in your name and be held with a bank or credit institution that is acceptable to us.
4.9 Payments to you will be made after deduction of any relevant tax. Regardless of whether we withhold tax, it is your responsibility to account for any taxes that may be payable to the appropriate authorities.
4.10 You can view details of the investments and money in your portfolio through the Website. For reporting purposes, we shall supply the par value and shall not attempt to provide current market valuations.
4.11 If you want ShareIn to hold money that has not been allocated in your AxiaFunder account in order to invest in future opportunities, you may do so. No interest is payable on money held in the AxiaFunder account and no fees are charged in respect of establishing the account. AxiaFunder or ShareIn may retain a payment representing interest on the money held in the AxiaFunder account.
4.12 The capital, dividend and/or interest repayments that are due to you will be received into your AxiaFunder account and will not be paid out to you or re-invested unless you provide us with express instructions. If balances have sat on your account for a long period of time, we may contact you to seek your instructions. We may offer the option to auto-investment or auto-re-investment on the Website in relation to bonds or equities. This would permit you to specify criteria against which you wish us to automatically invest cash balances on your AxiaFunder account.
5. Selling investments and Bulletin Board
5.1 There is no established secondary market for investments available through the Website and so you should normally expect to hold your investments until the redemption date, or beyond, if there is a significant default on the underlying investments.
5.2 We may provide a “Bulletin Board” on the Website that provides investors the opportunity to post bids and offers to buy and sell investments between themselves. We shall not be required to provide a Bulletin Board and may suspend or withdraw this service at any time at our absolute discretion. We may also apply restrictions on the terms on which investors may transact through the Bulletin Board, including restrictions on the price that can be sought or the timing of investments being eligible for inclusion on the Bulletin Board. The terms on which a Bulletin Board will be made available will be set out in separate terms and conditions.
5.3 If you find a buyer for your investments (including a buyer that you have identified without using the Bulletin Board), you may sell them through us by providing us with details of the purchaser, the price to be paid and the number of investments to be sold. If the buyer wishes us to account to them for the investment proceeds, they will need to be registered as an AxiaFunder member (although we shall be able to refuse to accept membership applications at our absolute discretion). We will not be responsible for promoting investments to the seller, but we may provide them with information that has been made available to other investors as a condition of registering the transfer.
5.4 Any payments due to or from you shall be made through your AxiaFunder account in the same way as for investment subscriptions, as set out in clause 4, except that the transaction shall take place between you and another investor, rather than with the Issuer.
6. Fees
6.1 We do not charge fees to you for arranging for you to invest in newly issued securities, as we get paid by the Issuer. Accordingly, any returns on bonds that are quoted to you are not reduced by our fees.
6.2 We or other persons may, however, charge fees for administering investments held in an Innovative Finance ISA.
6.3 Details of the fees we charge to you and to Issuers are set out in the Fees Table on the Website (see appendix below).
6.4 Unless otherwise stated, fees are quoted exclusive of VAT, where applicable.
7. Termination
7.1 If you no longer want to be a member of AxiaFunder, provided you have no investments with us, you can let us know by email and we will end your membership straight away. Termination will not affect the terms of any investment you have entered into.
7.2 We may terminate your membership in respect of making new investments at any time and for any reason, including but not limited to breach of these Terms and Conditions, applicable law, mis-use of our Website or account inactivity for a period of 12 months or more. If you hold investments through us, our cancellation of your membership will not affect the charges we will levy to the Issuer and we will continue to maintain your account in accordance with clause 4.
8. Fund investments
8.1 Where the investment is structured as an investment fund, we will ensure the appointment of an appropriately authorised fund manager to manage the fund's investments.
8.2 The identity of the fund manager will be stated in the Information Memorandum relating to the relevant fund. We shall be entitled to advise, appoint, and terminate the appointment of the fund manager on your behalf from time to time. Where we hold appropriate authorisation to do so, we may act as fund manager.
9. Conflicts of interest
9.1 AxiaFunder or its associates may provide some or all of the directors for the Issuer, to help it comply with its obligations to investors.
9.2 Investment in litigation funding carries a high possibility of failure, so that you may not receive back all or any of the money you have invested. We will generally take all steps to try to maximise returns to investors through providing directors to Issuers and liaising with or acting as the fund manager, as relevant. If there is a default on your investment by an Issuer of debt securities, we will only pursue insolvency proceedings against the Issuer if we believe this to be in your interests (which we do not anticipate being the case in normal circumstances). Because we will generally supply directors to the Issuers, we will appoint third party specialists to take any insolvency proceedings against issuers in the event that such action appears to be in the best interests of investors.
9.3 We receive payment of our fees from Issuers.
9.4 Any other conflicts that are specific to a particular investment shall be disclosed in the relevant Information Memorandum on the Website.
9.5 You may request a copy of our full conflicts of interest policy at any time.
9.6 When determining whether to fund one or more cases, or a law firm, we may take soundings from certain customers in order to ascertain investment appetite. More generally, we may, at our sole discretion, disclose the details of a new investment to different clients at different times.
10. Complaints and compensation
10.1 We have established procedures in accordance with the Financial Conduct Authority's rules for the effective consideration of complaints. You can find our complaints handling procedures here.
10.2 If you are unhappy with the outcome of a complaint, you may have the right to contract the Financial Ombudsman Service at:
The Financial Ombudsman Service,
Exchange Tower,
London, E14 9SR.
Tel: 0800 023 4567
Email [email protected].
10.3 Protection from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), in relation to claims against failed regulated firms, does not cover poor investment performance. Try the FSCS investment protection checker here. Protection from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) does not cover poor investment performance. If you have a complaint against an FCA regulated firm, FOS may be able to consider it. Learn more about FOS protection here.
10.4 For more information, including information about eligibility, you can contact the FSCS in writing at 7th Floor, Lloyds Chambers, Portsoken Street, London, E1 8BN by telephone on 0800 678 1100, by email to [email protected] or by going to www.fscs.org.uk..
11. Liability
11.1 You shall be liable to us for any loss or damage suffered by us as a result of any breach of these Terms and Conditions or the terms of any investment you make through AxiaFunder.
11.2 We shall not be liable to you for any loss or damage which you may suffer as a result of being a member of AxiaFunder or using the AxiaFunder services except where such loss or damage arises from our breach of these Terms and Conditions or was caused by our negligence, wilful default, or fraud. We are not responsible for any breach of these Terms and Conditions arising from circumstances outside our reasonable control. Our total liability to you in connection with these Terms and Conditions, your membership of AxiaFunder and your use of the services provided via the Website shall not exceed the amount of money you have invested giving rise to the liability.
11.3 Nothing in these Terms and Conditions shall limit our liability for personal injury or death, fraud, nor for any other liability, the exclusion or limitation of which is not permitted by applicable law or regulation.
11.4 When we make forward-looking statements, we will base them on reasonable assumptions, but we shall not otherwise be responsible for the achievement of such statements where they are outside of our control.
12. Intellectual property
12.1 Subject to clause 12.3 below, as between you and us, we own all present and future copyright, registered and unregistered trademarks, design rights, unregistered designs, database rights and all other present and future intellectual property rights and rights in the nature of intellectual property rights existing in or in relation to the Website.
12.2 If and to the extent that any such intellectual property rights vest in you by operation of law or otherwise, you agree to do any and all such acts and execute any and all such documents as we may reasonably request in order to assign such intellectual property rights back to us.
12.3 You shall retain ownership of all copyright in data you upload or submit to the Website. You grant us a world-wide exclusive, royalty-free, non-terminable licence to use, copy, distribute, publish, and transmit such data in any manner.
13. Amendments to these Terms and Conditions
13.1 We may need to update or amend these Terms and Conditions from time to time to comply with law or to meet our changing business requirements. We may make such changes without your specific agreement where those updates are, in our reasonable opinion, of an immaterial and routine nature and may not always be able to give you advanced notice of such updates or amendments but we will always post them on our Website so you can view them when you next log in. By continuing to use the AxiaFunder service, you agree to be bound by the terms of any such updates and amendments.
13.2 Where we make amendments to these Terms and Conditions that are averse to your interests (such as an increase in, or the introduction of, fees for existing services), we shall, if possible, provide you with one month's notice by email before such amendments become effective. You shall be entitled to terminate your membership at any time in accordance with clause 7. If you seek to terminate your membership, but continue to hold investments with us, the amendments will not apply to the continued holding of those investments unless the amendments are required by or reasonably necessary as a result of law or regulation.
14. General
14.1 These Terms and Conditions are governed by and to be construed in accordance with English law. In the event of any matter or dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms and Condition, you and we shall submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.
14.2 If any of these Terms and Conditions is found to be illegal, invalid, or unenforceable by any court of competent jurisdiction, the remainder shall, so far as possible, continue in full force and effect.
14.3 No single or partial exercise, or failure or delay in exercising any right, power, or remedy by us shall constitute a waiver by us of, or impair or preclude any further exercise of, that or any right, power or remedy arising under these Terms and Conditions or otherwise.
14.4 In the event of our insolvency, ShareIn will continue to hold your money pending investment, but will not facilitate any new investments. ShareIn will notify you of changes to reporting requirements in such event.
14.5 In the event of ShareIn's insolvency, we shall attempt to find an alternative services provider to enable the continued provision of the services to investors.
14.6 We and ShareIn may exercise any of our rights or discharge our obligations under these Terms and Conditions in our or ShareIn's own capacity or through any company or other legal entity which has all relevant legal authorisations, licences, or permissions to discharge those functions. Other than ShareIn, which shall be entitled to exercise rights under these Terms and Conditions as a contract party, no other person shall have rights to enforce terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
15. Contacting us
If you have any questions about these Terms and Conditions, or wish to contact us for any other reason, you can contact us by telephone on: +44 203 286 5922 or by email to: [email protected].
APPENDIX
Fees Table
We do not currently charge fees to investors directly, as our fees are paid for by the Issuers in which you invest. This means that no fees will be deducted from any returns that we project that you will receive on your investment (if we make such projections). The fees represent our current charging structure and may change in respect of future Issuers. The fees may also change in relation to existing investments if the third-party service providers we use change. We will notify you of any change to the fee arrangements in relation to existing investments.
Fees we charge to the Issuer
We charge fees to the Issuer rather than to investors. Accordingly, these fees do not affect the interest rate due to investors on bonds and the targeted returns for equity investments already take into account the fees charged to the issuing Company. The following is a summary of the types of fee we charge to Issuers:
- We charge an initial fee of 7-10% of the amount invested.
- We charge a success fee of 20% of any net proceeds received from the litigation before deducting any operating costs.
Other costs payable by funds
Where the Issuer is a fund, it will pay the following fees to the fund manager (Enterprise Investment Partners LLP):
- annual fees which are the higher of £15,000 (spread across all the funds) or up to 0.5% of the fund's capital investment amount.
The annual fee will be split between AxiaFunder and all the funds in operation from time to time. Initially AxiaFunder itself will pay the majority of the annual fee payable to Enterprise, so that the maximum fee payable by any fund will be limited to 0.5% of the fund's net asset value and will only be payable by the fund if it has sufficient cash available.
ISA Management Fees
We do not currently charge fees to investors to hold their bonds in an Innovative Finance ISA, although we may introduce fees in the future. We pay the ISA Manager for its services out of the fees we charge to Issuers.