Full-Time Senior Legal Counsel
Job Description
iwoca started in 2012 and was born out of the frustration that small businesses lack the access to finance they need to reach their potential. Our belief then was that technology must enable us to significantly shorten the archaic 8-week bank application process which more often than not results in a ‘no’. Nearly a decade later and we have served more than 50,000 businesses across the UK and Germany with more than £2 billion of finance. Our personal best from a business starting an application to money in the bank is 3m26s (faster than Mo Farah on 1,500 meters). It’s a good start, but it’s just the beginning.
Our mission is to finance 1 million businesses, so still, a long way to go.
Through the course of our journey, we have learned that
- SME lending is a tech play at heart – processing applications from SMEs of all shapes and sizes is very complex, and the effective use of technology is essential for doing that at scale
- Embedded finance is the future for SME lending – businesses won’t need to go to banks anymore. We’re increasingly reaching businesses by embedding our finance offering through API integrations into the SME ecosystem including online marketplaces, accountancy systems, or neobanks
- Payments and credit are converging: Many businesses have cash-flow gaps because they receive money from their customers only way after having to pay their own bills. So we want to tackle the cashflow problem by offering loans, but also tackle the problem at its root by improving payment terms.
- We must continuously innovate in order to meet more of our customers’ finance needs – we won the BCR which helped us launch iwocapay, and we’re soon launching a revenue-based loan. We’re constantly evaluating new opportunities, and finding new ways that we can meet the financing needs of more small businesses.
We work hard to make iwoca a place where everyone feels welcome, where you can confidently be yourself. We understand that diversity isn’t an optional add-on, it’s the core ingredient of what makes us great.
We are recruiting a senior legal counsel (with a Corporate & Commercial background) who will will focus on a number of legal areas and advise all teams across the business.
Requirements
As the role covers a broad range of legal issues, you will take a consultative approach and work closely with every business division within the ever evolving business of iwoca.
Some of the main elements of the role will involve:
- Supporting and advising every team from across the business – finance, compliance, sales, marketing, people, product, operations,
- Drafting, reviewing and negotiating customer, partnership and supplier contracts by providing pragmatic and commercial support
- Instructing and managing external legal counsel
- Building out and maintaining self-serve tools, playbooks and guides for the legal team and for the wider business
- Focusing on identifying and implementing process improvements to make legal work more efficient
- 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
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
- 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 distill complex and cumbersome legalese into understandable English
- 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/commercial contracts
- German language fluency would be an advantage
Benefits
What’s life like as an iwocan?
We all enjoy:
- Bright, modern office spaces in Covent Garden & Leeds. We have always supported flexible working however during the current pandemic the majority of iwocans are working from home. We have taken every precaution to keep our offices COVID-19 secure for those that need to use them.
- A calendar of ‘remote friendly’ events each week including Bingo, Comedy Nights, Escape Room challenges
- Two company retreats a year (in places like the French Alps or Spanish seaside)
- Pool, ping pong, foosball tables and tournaments
- Virtual Yoga classes every Tuesday and Thursday morning
- An ever-growing number of clubs including climbing, chess, football and boxing
- Plenty of drinks and snacks in our office kitchen
Just for you:
- Medical insurance from Vitality, including discounted gym membership
- We take your well being incredibly seriously, so you’ll have instant access to emotional and mental health support services via our partner Spill
- Share options
- Enhanced maternity and shared parental leave
- A workplace nursery tax benefit scheme. Save £££ on your nursery costs.
- 25 days holiday per year and an extra day off on your birthday
- All the equipment you need to set up your home working space up
- Paid volunteering time for you to support your chosen charity
- Bring your dog to work days, we’re dog friendly on Tuesday and Thursdays in our London office.
- Extra leave if you want to travel or study
- Special celebrations for anniversaries and long service including sabbatical
- Flexible working arrangements
- Cycle-to-work scheme
And to make sure we all keep learning, we offer:
- L&D budget including a book budget to encourage you to keep learning
- Company-wide talks with internal and external speakers
- A calendar of meetups we host at our office
- Access to learning platforms like Treehouse if you want to learn to code.
How to Apply
Please apply via: https://apply.workable.com/iwoca/j/B28BE0B346/424 total views, 0 today