Legal Counsel

Role Overview

• Lead the drafting, review, and negotiation of a wide range of commercial agreements, including customer terms and conditions, partner/aggregator contracts, and vendor agreements.
• Streamline day-to-day contracting processes to support revenue growth, ensuring legal execution keeps pace with a fast-moving fintech environment.
• Manage and coordinate external law firms for specialized support in contract drafting, tax, or broader corporate matters.
• Manage pre-action cases and debt management.
• Provide expert advice on the FCA regulatory framework applicable to EMIs, including the Electronic Money Regulations (EMRs), Payment Services Regulations (PSRs), and relevant FCA rules (PRIN, COND, CASS).
• Advise on safeguarding obligations for client funds to ensure Verto’s practices meet stringent regulatory requirements.
• Support the business as it enters new jurisdictions (e.g., EEA, US, UAE/DIFC, and East Africa), navigating multi-jurisdictional payments regulation.
• Act as a legal partner to the Product team, advising on the legal implications of new features, such as stablecoin on/off-ramping, API integrations, and FX products.
• Support UK GDPR compliance, managing data processing agreements and ensuring privacy-by-design in our product roadmap.
• Work alongside external counsel to support corporate structuring and any other corporate matters as required.
• Maintain a strong feedback loop with manager, and overall leadership team to ensure commercial contracts do not stall and legal risks are escalated appropriately.

Requirements

• Qualified solicitor (England & Wales) with a current practising certificate.
• Minimum 3–4 years' post-qualification experience (PQE), ideally including experience in financial services regulation.
• Substantial experience in an in-house legal position (FinTech, Banking or Payments experience is highly preferred).
• A "commercial brain" able to understand risk/reward trade-offs and support growth-oriented decisions rather than simply mitigating risk.
• Deep understanding of FCA-authorised EMI/Payment Institution regulations and cross-border payment flows (SWIFT, CHAPS, Faster Payments).
• Proven ability to operate effectively in a fast-growing startup or scale-up environment where agility is key.
• Experience managing external law firms and acting as a trusted advisor to leadership.

Tech Stack

• Swift

Benefits

• Insurance paid by the company
• Health and wellness benefits (with specific added benefits depending on the location of the role)
• Yearly salary review based on inflation, personal and business performance
• Access to entire Udemy’s library
• Budget for professional development courses
• Work-From-Anywhere policy for certain durations
• Integration programme (opportunity to work from our global offices)
• Regular team social events
• Pension scheme (depending on the role location)
• Flexible work arrangements
• Exposure to work with globally distributed teams
• Location specific benefits like car lease policy, cycle to work, gym membership, etc.