Senior Lawyer - Merchant Services - Banking Products Legal (12 months FTC)

We're looking for a Senior Lawyer to join the Banking Products team in Business and Commercial Banking and Corporate and Institutional Banking Legal on a 12-month FTC. Banking Products Legal plays a critical role in supporting the Bank's strategy. This role will focus on legal support for merchant services solutions to small businesses, larger corporate customers, governmental bodies and local authorities. We work closely with colleagues in Product, Coverage, our transformational Platform teams and Delivery plus other functional support areas. The products and services we support are merchant acquiring, payment getaways, partnerships, digital innovations including embedded finance payment methods and online digital channels through which our products and services are provided to clients. Our team provides legal and advice support in relation to product development and innovation, negotiation of commercial contracts, legal and regulatory change projects, rectifications and remediations, industry change initiatives, customer on-boarding, end-to-end customer journeys and the management of legal risk. The merchant services business has a programme of strategic growth so a really exciting time to be part of the legal team supporting this. The successful candidate will be someone who delivers influential insight, engages proactively with senior partners and the Legal & Secretariat Community and operates as a subject matter specialist. The role will also include delegated line management responsibilities. The place to be! You'll be part of a truly supportive team working on core and innovative products and helping to find legal solutions to support strategy. We like to challenge the status quo and help drive continuous improvement activity. This role will require a good understanding of the legal, regulatory framework applicable to payments and strong commercial contracts experience. What you'll be doing:

• Operate as a specialist legal advisor in relation to merchant services matters including providing legal input to support delivery of projects, innovation and product developments and rectifications.
• Negotiate with customers and suppliers in related to customised agreements.
• Advise on and draft terms and conditions for contracts relates to merchant services and associated services.
• Support legal, regulatory and change projects across Business and Commercial Banking and Corporate and Institutional Banking Legal and Legal & Secretariat.
• Proactively identify, report and call out legal and governance risks and recommend solutions as required.
• Advise on customer and colleague journey enhancements.
• Build and maintain a strong partner network to ensure there is a good understanding of business strategy and pipeline and use that knowledge to help prioritise team activity.
• Manage use of panel law firms and build and maintain strong relationships with external lawyers.
• Help run the team by monitoring our service delivery, finding opportunities to improve the way we work and training the team and our business.
  
  Qualified as a solicitor in the UK (or equivalent qualification).
• Minimum 8 years of experience of commercial contracts and/or merchant services, payment services regulations and transaction banking services.
• Experience in developing and coaching others.
• People orientated.
• Able to build strong collaborative relationships across Legal and Secretariat and the business to support delivery of strategy.
• Confident in using your experience and insights to influence, advise and challenge business partners.
• Helps identify, mitigate and control legal risk weakness.
• Able to manage your own workload priorities and support more junior colleagues to do the same.
• Can stay on top of and share regulatory, industry and legal change with our team and business.
• Demonstrates commitment to self-development and the development of colleagues.
• Brings enthusiasm and curiosity to the role
We know that great talent comes from many backgrounds. Whilst this job advert may reference specific years of experience, we recognise that skills are developed in many ways, so if you have relevant, transferable experience, we encourage you to apply.

We also offer a wide-ranging benefits package, which includes:
• A generous pension contribution of up to 15%
• An annual performance-related bonus
• Share schemes including free shares
• Benefits you can adapt to your lifestyle, such as discounted shopping
• 30 days' holiday, with bank holidays on top
• A range of wellbeing initiatives and generous parental leave policies