Financial Crime Lawyer

Essential Skills:

• Qualified lawyer (Solicitor, Barrister, Attorney or equivalent).

• Advisory experience in AML ABC, CTF, or Sanctions.

Some other highly valued skills may include:

• Understanding of the requirements of legal risk management in a financial institution.

• Previous experience working in-house within the financial services industry, or experience representing the financial services industry in other contexts, e.g., law firm.

To ensure that the institution's activities are conducted in compliance with applicable financial crime laws and regulations, and to help the bank manage legal and reputational risks associated with its activities.

• Development and implementation of best practice legal strategies for risk management and compliance.
• Legal advice and support to the business on financial crime laws, regulations, and rules, including anti-money laundering (AML), sanctions, and anti-bribery and corruption (ABC) laws and regulations.
• Support other legal teams in representation, of the bank in legal proceedings that raise financial crime issues, such as litigation, arbitration, and regulatory investigations.
• Advising on financial crime compliance policies and procedures including to assess compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
• Legal research and analysis to stay up to date on changes in laws and regulations that may impact the bank's financial crime compliance practices.
• To support Compliance, contributing to and delivering training to educate employees on legal and regulatory requirements related to financial crime.
• Pro-active identification, communication, and provision of legal advice on applicable laws, rules and regulations (LRRs). Keeping up to date with regards to changes to LRRs in the relevant coverage area. Ensuring that LRRs are effectively allocated to, and adequately reflected within, the relevant policies, standards and controls.

This role can be based in London or Manchester.

• To contribute or set strategy, drive requirements and make recommendations for change. Plan resources, budgets, and policies; manage and maintain policies/ processes; deliver continuous improvements and escalate breaches of policies/procedures..
• If managing a team, they define jobs and responsibilities, planning for the department's future needs and operations, counselling employees on performance and contributing to employee pay decisions/changes. They may also lead a number of specialists to influence the operations of a department, in alignment with strategic as well as tactical priorities, while balancing short and long term goals and ensuring that budgets and schedules meet corporate requirements..
• If the position has leadership responsibilities, People Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L - Listen and be authentic, E - Energise and inspire, A - Align across the enterprise, D - Develop others..
• OR for an individual contributor, they will be a subject matter expert within own discipline and will guide technical direction. They will lead collaborative, multi-year assignments and guide team members through structured assignments, identify the need for the inclusion of other areas of specialisation to complete assignments. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• Advise key stakeholders, including functional leadership teams and senior management on functional and cross functional areas of impact and alignment.
• Manage and mitigate risks through assessment, in support of the control and governance agenda.
• Demonstrate leadership and accountability for managing risk and strengthening controls in relation to the work your team does.
• Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the organisation functions to contribute to achieving the goals of the business.
• Collaborate with other areas of work, for business aligned support areas to keep up to speed with business activity and the business strategies.
• Create solutions based on sophisticated analytical thought comparing and selecting complex alternatives. In-depth analysis with interpretative thinking will be required to define problems and develop innovative solutions.
• Adopt and include the outcomes of extensive research in problem solving processes.
• Seek out, build and maintain trusting relationships and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders in order to accomplish key business objectives, using influencing and negotiating skills to achieve outcomes.

As a Financial Crime Lawyer, your role will be to provide consistently excellent, timely, high quality and commercially focused legal and regulatory advice on complex anti-money laundering (AML), counter-terrorist financing (CTF), sanctions, and anti-bribery and corruption (ABC) matters. You will provide support to the business, compliance and other legal teams in relation to financial crime matters. Prior experience of working as a financial crime advisory lawyer (as opposed to an investigations lawyer) is desirable. While the role's focus is on advisory work, you will also provide expertise and leadership for significant investigations involving AML/CTF, sanctions and ABC alongside leading policy efforts for AML/CTF, sanctions and ABC issues as needed.

You may be assessed on key critical skills relevant for success in role, such as risk and controls, change and transformation, business acumen, strategic thinking and digital and technology, as well as job-specific technical skills.