Head of Legal

Description

We’re here because we believe in small businesses. We believe they deserve better than waiting weeks for a loan. And we believe it’s our job to help them grow.

We started in 2012 with these principles, and we hold true to them today – now that we’re one of the fastest-growing fintechs in Europe. In the time between, we’ve built the best tech platform in lending, won several awards and opened up £3.5 billion in loans to over 70,000 businesses.

Requirements

We are recruiting a Head of Legal (with a Corporate & Commercial background) who will focus on a broad range of legal areas and advise all teams across the business in a consultative manner, as well as managing and strengthening the existing legal team.

Some of the main elements of the role will involve:

• Supporting and advising every team from across the business - finance, capital markets, compliance, sales, marketing, people, product, operations.
• Managing the legal team of commercial counsel and paralegal, and working closely with the capital markets legal counsel and collections team on legal matters
• Drafting, reviewing and negotiating customer, partnership and supplier contracts by providing pragmatic and commercial support
• Instructing and managing external legal counsel, and managing legal budget
• Focusing on identifying and implementing process improvements to make legal work more efficient, including building out and maintaining self-serve tools, playbooks and guides for the legal team and for the wider business
• Supporting on a range of transactions which may include fundraisings, group structuring and bank financing
• Supporting any regulatory matters which may include licencing issues and interaction with regulatory authorities
• Supporting corporate housekeeping, management of constitutional documents and statutory books, and ongoing filing requirements across all countries of operation (in particular, the UK, Luxembourg and Germany).
• Supporting governance initiatives across the company, including advising on the legal rights and duties of the company and its directors globally, in particular UK, Luxembourg and Germany

We’re looking for a senior lawyer with private practice training and/or in-house experience in a fast-paced environment. You will be driven, able to work independently and able to apply your existing knowledge and approach across a very wide range of legal (and quasi-legal) areas. As a fintech business, it helps if you have had experience in a similar area, or perhaps you have a keen interest in tech outside of your day to day work.

We'd love to hear from you if:

• You are a mid-senior level lawyer, qualified in England & Wales or another common law jurisdiction having taken the QLTS
• You grasp new legal concepts quickly, and are not afraid to use your common sense
• Your communication skills are first class, and you are able to dis-still complex and cumbersome legalese into understandable English
• You are able to work with a range of people and personalities and are robust when it comes to challenging discussions
• You are easy to work with, and want to work in a fun, fast-growing but demanding company
• Strong experience across a range of corporate legal matters and commercial contracts
• Experience of working with Luxembourg fund structures and/or debt capital markets would be an advantage
• German language fluency would be an advantage

Benefits

We put a lot of effort into making iwoca a brilliant place to work:

• Offices in London, Leeds and Frankfurt
• Events and clubs, like bingo, comedy nights, yoga classes, football…
• Two company retreats a year, we’ve been to France, Italy, Spain and further afield
• Plenty of drinks and snacks in our offices

Our benefits:

• Medical insurance from Vitality, including discounted gym membership
• 25 days’ holiday and an extra day off for your birthday
• Instant access to emotional and mental health support with our partner, Spill
• Share options
• Generous maternity leave and shared parental leave
• A nursery tax benefit scheme to help you save money
• Paid volunteering time to support your chosen charity
• Extra leave if you want to travel or study
• One-month fully paid sabbatical after 4 years
• Cycle-to-work scheme and electric car scheme

And to make sure we all keep learning, we offer:

• An L&D budget for everyone, including a book budget
• Company-wide talks with internal and external speakers
• Access to learning platforms like Treehouse if you want to learn to code