Securities Class Action Services: Providers, Fair Funds, and Recoveries

Securities class action services are specialized firms that recover money for institutional investors from securities fraud settlements — monitoring litigation worldwide, matching a client’s trading history to eligible cases, filing claims with court-appointed administrators, and auditing the payments that come back. Investors have to affirmatively file to collect, deadlines are strict, and roughly 65% of available settlement funds go unclaimed every year.¹ For pension plans and other fiduciaries, engaging one of these services is usually the practical way to meet a legal duty to pursue money owed to the fund.

What These Services Do

Recovery work follows four stages. Providers first monitor class actions and group litigation globally, tracking new filings, settlements, and court-approved deadlines. They then analyze a client’s historical trading data against each case’s eligibility criteria — the specific securities, the class period during which purchases occurred, and the recognized loss formula that determines a claim’s value. They prepare and submit claims to the claims administrator. Finally, they audit disbursements to confirm the client receives the correct amount.²

Filing is where errors are most expensive. About one-third of manually filed claims are dismissed before settlement because of errors or missing documentation. Claims administrators have also raised audit scrutiny in recent years as fraudulent filings have become a growing concern, so data accuracy matters more than it once did.¹ Established providers build in buffers: ISS SCAS, for example, submits all U.S. domestic claims at least two weeks before deadline so errors can be corrected.³

Scope extends beyond standard U.S. class action filings. Major providers also handle antitrust settlements, SEC Fair Funds distributions, and international group litigation, each with different procedural requirements.²

Why Fiduciaries Rely on Them

For pension funds, mutual funds, and other institutional investors, participating in class action recoveries is not optional. Under ERISA, plan fiduciaries must take “reasonable steps to realize on claims held in trust.” Courts have read that to mean ignoring viable class action claims can breach a fiduciary duty, and a responsible fiduciary can be held personally liable for losses the plan sustains through an imprudent failure to recover. When a fiduciary lacks the in-house expertise to manage recovery, that same duty obligates them to engage a specialized firm.⁴

Public pension plans face parallel expectations. The Government Finance Officers Association recommends that plans designate an individual or external service to monitor eligibility, retain transaction documentation for at least ten years, and report regularly to the governing board on the status of all eligible claims.⁵

The scale of the problem behind the duty is well established. A 2005 study by Professors James Cox and Randall Thomas found fewer than one-third of large institutional investors actually filed claims in securities class actions, and participation was likely lower among less sophisticated investors.⁶

The Main Providers

Three firms dominate the market, each serving hundreds or thousands of institutional clients.

ISS Securities Class Action Services

Founded in 1988, ISS SCAS is the longest-established firm in the space and operates as a brand under Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS STOXX). Over a recent two-year period, it reported $1 billion recovered, 2.3 million claims filed, and a pipeline of $6.8 billion in active securities class actions. It serves more than 600 institutional clients with over 5.5 million accounts in production.²

ISS SCAS maintains a proprietary research database of more than 14,000 cases and offers a client portal, RecoverMax, that provides transparency into claims status, custom reporting, and self-filing capabilities.² Through its SCAS Global division, the firm handles domestic U.S. filings, antitrust opt-in filings, SEC Fair Funds, and international claims across more than 20 jurisdictions.³

Financial Recovery Technologies

Founded in 2008 and headquartered near Boston, Financial Recovery Technologies (FRT) serves over 2,500 institutional clients worldwide and reports cumulative recoveries exceeding $3.5 billion with more than 2 million claims filed.⁷ FRT is a Cross Country Group company with offices in London, Sydney, and New York.⁸

FRT offers a distinctive niche service called claims monetization. Hedge funds and investment vehicles that are winding down can sell the rights to their outstanding and future settlement claims to FRT for an immediate cash payment, rather than waiting years for disbursements to arrive.⁹ In January 2026, FRT announced a strategic relationship with State Street to support the custody bank’s global class actions program.⁸

Broadridge Financial Solutions

Broadridge (NYSE: BR), an S&P 500 fintech company, operates a Global Class Action Services division serving more than 1,000 organizations. The firm describes its approach as an “Advocacy Model” built on AI-driven filings and reconciliation systems, staffed by professionals averaging 15 to 20 years of class action experience.¹⁰ Its platform covers more than 35 jurisdictions.¹¹

In October 2025, Northern Trust, with $18.1 trillion in assets under custody, selected Broadridge to expand its global asset recovery capabilities.¹¹ Broadridge’s 2026 annual report on the global class action landscape recorded more than $4 billion in worldwide investor recoveries in 2025, with nine mega settlements exceeding $100 million.¹⁰

SEC Fair Funds Are a Separate Track

Not every settlement flows through a class action. SEC Fair Funds, created by Section 308(a) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, let the SEC combine civil penalties with disgorged gains into a single distribution to harmed investors.¹² In 2024, the SEC established 10 new funds totaling more than $530 million, up from $236 million in 2023.¹³

Fair Fund rules are stricter than standard class action rules. The SEC requires 100% documentation of all holdings and trades, ideally from original custodial records created at the time of the activity, and claims short on documentation are usually rejected without an opportunity to correct. The SEC also requires 100% of the payout to go directly to the beneficial owner, which prohibits contingency-fee deductions and has pushed some filing services toward upfront pricing on this work.¹³

International Recoveries Work Differently

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act applies only to transactions in securities listed on domestic exchanges or domestic transactions in other securities. The ruling barred foreign plaintiffs suing foreign issuers over foreign-exchange trades from U.S. federal courts.¹⁴ Recoveries on those losses now have to be pursued abroad, and that is a large part of what international-capable services do.

Most non-U.S. jurisdictions operate under opt-in systems, meaning investors must affirmatively register to participate rather than being automatically included. Germany’s KapMuG regime typically gives investors a six-month window to register once a group action is declared. Australia has shifted toward open (opt-out) class actions with common fund orders.¹⁵ The Netherlands uses the WCAM mechanism, which enabled the €1.3 billion Ageas (formerly Fortis) settlement in 2018, the largest in European history.¹⁶

The EU’s Representative Actions Directive, which entered application in June 2023, is reshaping this landscape further. Germany’s implementing legislation took effect in December 2023, the Netherlands updated its WAMCA regime in June 2023, France’s DDADUE Law took effect in May 2025, and Luxembourg transposed the directive in October 2025.¹⁷¹⁸ More than 100 collective redress claims were filed in Europe in 2025.¹⁹ Each new regime adds registration windows and evidentiary requirements that a service has to track case by case.

The Current Recovery Landscape

Filing volume has cooled slightly while stakes have grown. U.S. securities class action filings totaled 207 in 2025, down from 226 in 2024, though both years exceeded the historical average of 193 core filings. The Disclosure Dollar Loss and Maximum Dollar Loss indices both hit historic highs, driven by mega filings that accounted for 81% and 89% of those totals.²⁰

Seventy-four cases settled in 2025 for a combined $3.0 billion. The median settlement reached $17.3 million, the highest level since 1997. Median time from filing to settlement hearing held steady at about three and a half years.²¹

Case mix is shifting. AI-related securities filings hit 16 in 2025 and have topped 50 over the past five years, with allegations typically centered on “AI washing” — misleading claims about a company’s AI capabilities or revenue.¹⁸ Early data suggests AI cases may be harder for defendants to dismiss than other core federal filings. SPAC-related filings continued a multi-year decline, falling to 10 from a peak of 33 in 2021. Cryptocurrency cases ticked up to 9, and COVID-19-related filings fell to 3, the lowest since that category began.²⁰

For any institution holding equities, the practical takeaway is straightforward. Money is on the table every year, the documentation bar keeps rising, and the burden of identifying eligible claims sits entirely with investors and their agents — no central database matches shareholders to settlements automatically.⁶ A recovery service is how most fiduciaries close that gap.

1
Financial Recovery Technologies. Securities Class Action Recovery
2
ISS Securities Class Action Services. ISS SCAS
3
ISS Securities Class Action Services. ISS SCAS Filing Clients
4
The Wagner Law Group. The Fiduciary Duty to Recover Securities Class Action Proceeds
5
Government Finance Officers Association. Developing a Policy to Participate in Securities Litigation
6
Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. Automating Securities Class Action Settlements
7
Financial Recovery Technologies. FRT Home
8
Financial Recovery Technologies. FRT Selected by State Street
9
Financial Recovery Technologies. Claims Monetization
10
Broadridge Financial Solutions. Global Securities Class Actions Report
11
Northern Trust. Northern Trust Selects Broadridge Global Class Action Service
12
U.S. Government Accountability Office. SEC: Information on Fair Fund and Disgorgement Fund Cases
13
National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems. Strategies for Addressing Common SEC Fair Fund Recovery Challenges
14
Justia. Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd.
15
Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd. Recent Developments in Global Securities Litigation
16
Proskauer Rose. Dutch Court Approves Collective Settlement of Fortis Shareholders Claims
17
European Commission. Representative Actions Directive
18
Broadridge Financial Solutions. Global Class Action Annual Report
19
PRNewswire. AI-Driven Filings, Opt-In Momentum, and More Than $4B in Recoveries
20
Cornerstone Research. Securities Class Action Filings — 2025 Year in Review
21
Cornerstone Research. Median Securities Settlement Amount at Record High