Principal Legal Counsel, Pensions and Investments (12 Month FTC) New Cardiff, London or Remote (UK)

Cardiff, London or Remote (UK)

We're on a mission to make money work for everyone.

We're waving goodbye to the complicated and confusing ways of traditional banking.

With our hot coral cards and get-paid-early feature, combined with financial education on social media and our award winning customer service, we have a long history of creating magical moments for our customers!

We're not about selling products - we want to solve problems and change lives through Monzo ?

We're looking for a Principal Legal Counsel - Pensions and Investments to join our team at Monzo as caregiver leave cover, and help us build one of the best, most innovative banks in the world. This role will report to the Director of Legal, Wealth, and is part of the Legal team in the Legal & Board Governance Collective at Monzo.

In this role, you'll work closely with the Wealth Collective on Monzo's personal pension and investment products (including Stocks & Shares ISAs and GIAs), and support the teams in helping our customers build their financial future. You'll work at all levels in the organisation and with a wide range of stakeholders from Product Managers and Designers to Operations professionals and software Engineers.

• Be a trusted adviser and partner to the Pensions & Investments teams, helping them build beautiful products and create effective customer journeys in the Monzo app whilst meeting our legal and regulatory requirements.
• Advise on the development of our pensions and investments offering, including expanding the range of assets available, and offering draw-down.
• Support the Pensions & Investments teams in managing third parties involved in the provision of pensions and investments services (including pension scheme trustees and administrators, and custodians).
• Equip the team to deal with developments in the regulatory landscape for pensions and investments, and work closely with Compliance colleagues on all things regulatory.
• Work with Risk and Control closely to help the team identify and manage legal and regulatory risks relating to the pensions and investments business.
• Prioritise thoughtfully across pensions and investments activities to continuously operate with the highest impact.
• Develop and implement processes and procedures to increase the efficiency and scalability of pensions and investments legal advice across the Monzo Group.
• Deliver training, share insights from your work, and help educate others on pensions and investments.
• Manage relationships with our external legal counsel and work to ensure we are optimising our legal spend on pensions and investments matters, and obtaining the best value.
• You have experience advising on personal pensions and/or retail investments platforms, and a solid grounding in direct to customer retail investments with around 5 years + relevant post qualification experience.
• You have outstanding technical skills and an understanding of regulatory and tax issues for pensions and investments, having spent time in private practice and preferably time in house at a financial institution or fintech.
• You are a team player and natural collaborator who is passionate about effecting change whilst at the same time being goals focused and impact driven.
• You are a strategic thinker, a strong communicator and a keen problem solver who knows how to assess risk and recommend solutions that balance business and risk perspectives.
• You are willing to jump in and handle a wide range of legal issues, even outside your core areas of expertise in a proactive, and resourceful way, and can sensibly assess when best to engage external counsel in a cost effective way.
• You are comfortable operating at all levels of the organisation up to the Executive and liaising with a variety of internal and external stakeholders.
• You welcome diverse perspectives, think rigorously and critically and aren't afraid to challenge assumptions.
• You've an open and curious mind, you are passionate about the intersection of banking and technology, and what we are doing here at Monzo excites you!

Our interview process involves 3 main stages:

• Intro calls (with the hiring team, and potentially Director of Legal, Wealth)
• First stage role specific interview
• Second stage values interview

Our average process takes around 2-4 weeks but we will always work around your availability. You will have the chance to speak to our recruitment team at various points during your process but if you do have any specific questions ahead of this please contact us on business .

This role can be based in our London office, but we're open to distributed working within the UK (with ad hoc meetings in London).

We offer flexible working hours and trust you to work enough hours to do your job well, at times that suit you and your team.

Learning budget of £1,000 a year for books, training courses and conferences.

And much more, see our full list of benefits here.

Diversity and inclusion are a priority for us and we're making sure we have lots of support for all of our people to grow at Monzo. At Monzo, we're embracing diversity by fostering an inclusive environment for all people to do the best work of their lives with us. This is integral to our mission of making money work for everyone. You can read more in our blog, the 2024 Diversity and Inclusion Report and the 2024 Gender Pay Gap Report.

We're an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, veteran, neurodiversity or disability status.

If you have a preferred name, please use it to apply. We don't need full or birth names at application stage