Senior Legal Counsel, Regulatory

🚀 We’re on a mission to make money work for everyone.

We’re waving goodbye to the complicated and confusing ways of traditional banking.

After starting as a prepaid card, our product offering has grown a lot in the last 10 years in the UK. As well as personal and business bank accounts, we offer joint accounts, accounts for 16-17 year olds, a free kids account and credit cards in the UK, with more exciting things to come beyond. Our UK customers can also save, invest and combine their pensions with us. 

With our hot coral cards and get-paid-early feature, combined with financial education on social media and our award winning customer service, we have a long history of creating magical moments for our customers!

We’re not about selling products - we want to solve problems and change lives through Monzo ❤️

Hear from our UK team about what it's like working at Monzo ✨

📍London/Cardiff/UK Remote | 💰circa £100k  + Stock Options + Benefits | Hear from the team 

⭐Our Legal team

We're looking for a Senior Legal Counsel, Regulatory to join our team at Monzo and help us build one of the best, most innovative banks in the world. This role will have day-to-day responsibility for advising on regulatory matters, with a predominant focus on financial crime. This role will report to Monzo’s Principal Legal Counsel - Regulatory and is part of the Group Centre Regulatory team in the Legal & Board Governance Collective at Monzo. We support Monzo Group and its operating entities globally. 

In this role, you will work at all levels in the organisation and in close partnership with our Financial Crime, US, EU, and Risk & Compliance teams, as well as in collaboration with senior Legal team stakeholders as the business develops into a matrix organisation. You’ll lead on a wide range of financial crime legal matters with opportunities for growth in role as the business scales in the UK and internationally.  There'll also be opportunities to get involved in operational resilience, artificial intelligence, competition, and other regulatory matters. 

No two days are the same in Monzo’s Legal team. This is not your typical legal role; so we’re not looking for a typical person. We’re looking for someone with exceptional technical expertise but is willing to roll up their sleeves and get things done. If this sounds right up your street then get in touch, we’d love to hear from you. 

🔑You’ll play a key role by…

• Acting as a trusted legal advisor to our Financial Crime Monzonauts in local teams.
• Monitoring and advising upon material global regulatory changes and providing guidelines to local teams.
• Supporting our Group Regulatory Affairs teams to liaise with key regulatory bodies and manage cross-border regulatory issues
• Managing global regulatory frameworks to ensure consistent application across entities.
• Providing crucial insights and leverage entity local expertise to feed into the consolidated group regulatory strategy.
• Developing and implementing processes and procedures to increase the efficiency and scalability of regulatory legal advice across the Monzo Group.
• Delivering training, sharing insights from your work, and helping educate others on financial crime.
• Managing relationships with our external legal counsel and ensuring we are optimising our legal spend on regulatory matters. 

🤩 We’d love to hear from you if…

• You have experience advising on financial crime regulatory matters, with a minimum of around 5 years relevant post qualification experience (or equivalent).
• You have a genuine interest in financial crime regulatory matters; it’s not just your job but something you care about.
• You have an excellent technical grounding in all aspects of financial crime regulatory law (including Anti-Money Laundering, Sanctions, Anti-Bribery and Corruption, Proceeds of Crime and Counter Terrorist Financing matters), having spent time in private practice, and ideally time in house at a bank and/or other financial institution or regulator.
• You are passionate about working to advise the business to help keep Monzo safe and compliant with our legal and regulatory obligations.
• You are a strategic thinker, a strong communicator and a keen problem solver who can recommend solutions that balance business and risk perspectives.
• You are willing to jump in and handle a wide range of financial regulatory legal issues that may arise even outside your core areas of expertise in an enthusiastic, proactive, and resourceful manner, and can sensibly assess when best to engage external counsel in a cost-effective way.
• You are comfortable operating at all levels of the organisation up to the Executive and liaising with a variety of internal and external stakeholders.
• You enjoy horizon scanning, proactively assessing risks, and quickly identifying and independently implementing mitigating actions. 
• You have a dynamic and entrepreneurial approach and are comfortable with the ambiguity of a fast-paced and rapidly-evolving environment.
• You have an open and curious mind, are passionate about the intersection of banking and technology and are excited to join us for the next stage of our journey at Monzo!
• You welcome diverse perspectives, think rigorously and critically and aren’t afraid to challenge assumptions.
• You’ve got additional experience in any of the following regulatory areas: operational resilience, artificial intelligence, competition, and interchange fee regulation.

Not ticking every box? That’s totally okay! Studies show that women and people of colour might hesitate to apply unless they meet every single requirement. At Monzo, we’re dedicated to creating an inclusive and welcoming team. If you’re passionate about this role and keen to learn and grow with us, we encourage you to apply - even if you don’t have everything that's listed just yet. Drop us your application, we’d love to hear from you! In-house financial services experience (including at a regulator) is preferred, but is not essential for the right candidate. PQE is a guide only.

🌈 The application journey has 3 key steps

• Recruiter call (potentially followed by an initial call with Principal Legal Counsel - Regulatory)
• First stage 1 hour role specific interview (including chatting through a case study)
• Second stage 1 hour behavioural interview

Our average process takes around 3-4 weeks but we will always work around your availability. You will have the chance to speak to our recruitment team at various points during your process but if you do have any specific questions ahead of this please contact us on business-hiring@monzo.com.

We’ll only close this role once we have enough applications for the next stage. Please submit your application as soon as possible to make sure you don’t miss out.

Your compensation package:

💰c. £100,000 base salary (dependent on experience) ➕ stock options

✅ We can sponsor visas 

📍This role can be based in our London office, but we're open to distributed working within the UK (with ad hoc meetings in London).

⏰ We offer flexible working hours and trust you to work enough hours to do your job well, at times that suit you and your team

📚Learning budget of £1,000 a year for books, training courses and conferences

#LI-DH1 #LI-REMOTEs

Equal opportunities for everyone

Diversity and inclusion are a priority for us and we’re making sure we have lots of support for all of our people to grow at Monzo. At Monzo, we’re embracing diversity by fostering an inclusive environment for all people to do the best work of their lives with us. This is integral to our mission of making money work for everyone. You can read more in our blog, 2024 Diversity and Inclusion Report and 2024 Gender Pay Gap Report.

We’re an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual attention, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, or veteran, neurodiversity or disability status.

If you have a preferred name, please use it to apply. We don't need full or birth names at application stage 😊