Senior Legal Counsel

Senior Legal Counsel

North West | Permanent | Hybrid, two days on site

A well established consumer finance business is hiring an experienced lawyer into its in-house legal team. This is a genuinely dual brief rather than a pure regulatory seat. Roughly half the work is consumer credit and FCA advisory, the other half is contracting, and the two rarely sit apart: the regulatory analysis layers over most of what crosses the desk. You would join a team of senior solicitors, each owning a distinct patch, and this one is regulatory plus commercial contracts.

Day to day:

• Advising on UK consumer credit and financial services regulation, including the Consumer Credit Act, the FCA Handbook and Consumer Duty
• Supporting regulated products through design, launch and lifecycle, covering credit accounts, buy now pay later, fixed sum lending and payment solutions, along with their terms, disclosures and customer communications
• Drafting and negotiating consumer facing contracts and terms
• A significant volume of technology contracting, including software licensing, infrastructure and services agreements, with the regulatory overlay applied on top
• Wider commercial negotiation across outsourcing, servicing, distribution, data sharing, partnerships and supply
• Regulatory change work spanning Consumer Duty, credit reform, operational resilience and financial promotions
• Working with Compliance and Risk on policy, governance and control frameworks, and contributing to committee and board papers
• Incident management, complaints and remediation strategy
• Direct engagement with the FCA, including notifications, information requests and supervisory interactions
• Instructing external counsel, and working with and mentoring junior lawyers in the team

What matters to them:

• Qualified in England and Wales with a minimum of five years post qualification experience
• Genuine dual capability across financial services regulation and commercial contract drafting. Strong on one but light on the other is unlikely to land here
• Consumer credit and FCA regulation are the priorities, gained in house in consumer credit, consumer finance or fintech
• Strong consumer contract drafting
• Comfort with technology contracting, particularly software licences and infrastructure or services agreements
• The confidence to influence senior stakeholders across Risk, Compliance, Product, Operations and Technology
• A real appetite for developing junior lawyers

Package:

• Competitive base salary
• Performance related bonus
• Car allowance
• Benefits allowance, from which private medical cover is taken
• 30 days holiday plus bank holidays
• Matched pension contributions
• Staff discount
• Flexible start and finish times, with two days a week on site
• A four day week could be considered for the right person

For a confidential conversation, contact Sam Fryer, Senior Manager In-House Legal at LHH, on sam.fryer@lhh.com or 07703 355559.