Lead Legal Counsel – Products & Customer

Overview

In this role you will provide strategic legal guidance across lending, savings and customer propositions, shaping product development and managing regulatory risk. You will collaborate with senior stakeholders to support fair customer outcomes in a highly regulated environment. The position sits at the core of a growing mutual organisation, offering visibility and influence over key business decisions. You will help drive risk-based decisions and lead complex legal issues across Product & Customer areas, with a focus on practical, commercially minded solutions.

Pay / Benefits

• 28 days holiday plus bank holidays and holiday buy/sell
• annual discretionary bonus
• personal pension with matched contributions
• life assurance (6x salary)
• car allowance
• Private Medical Insurance

Responsibilities

• Provide strategic legal guidance on retail savings, lending, bank accounts and customer products
• Support product development and business changes by identifying legal and regulatory considerations early
• Advise stakeholders on legal risk and regulatory changes, delivering practical, commercially focused solutions
• Advise on product design, customer journeys, communications, processes, policies and governance
• Build trusted relationships across the business and support risk-based decision making
• Manage external legal advisers and contribute to continuous improvement within Legal
• Lead on complex legal issues across all Product & Customer areas

Key requirements

• Post-qualification experience with qualification as solicitor, barrister or equivalent
• Strong expertise in financial services law and regulation (lending, savings, mortgages, consumer credit, payment services, conduct regulation)
• Ability to provide pragmatic, commercially focused legal advice to senior stakeholders
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills
• Experience interpreting regulatory change and translating requirements into practical actions
• Strong drafting, negotiation, analytical and risk management capabilities
• Experience in-house within a financial services organisation (helpful)
• Experience supporting property-related matters or complex customer disputes (helpful)

• strong stakeholder management
• influencing skills
• clear communication
• financial services law and regulation
• regulatory change interpretation
• risk management

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