Legal & Compliance

What we do

The Legal & Compliance Division supports all areas of the Nationwide Group. It offers high quality, consistent, timely advice as well as guidance and policy on all the legal and regulatory issues that affect us.

Compliance teams are united under the common aim of 'Supporting Fair Customer Outcomes’. While Legal teams work for the common purpose of ‘Partnering Business Success’.

Legal –

• helps us achieve our objectives by providing first-rate legal solutions
• acts as a legal advisor to the business – key customers include Group Strategy, Group Purchasing, Treasury, Nationwide branches, HR, Marketing, Banking & Savings.

Compliance –

• carries out independent reviews on our compliance with our regulatory obligations
• provides specialist compliance advice and support on emerging and existing regulation, legislation (where appropriate) and voluntary codes
• delivers timely and effective Anti-Money Laundering operations, advice and support.

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How we're structured

Legal & Compliance sits within Group Finance alongside Finance, Audit & Business Protection, Treasury and Risk Management. The teams report into the Head of Legal or Head of Compliance and then into the Divisional Director, Legal & Compliance.

Legal is organised into –

• five legal teams each headed by a Senior Solicitor
• a company secretarial team headed by a Senior Chartered Secretary
• a support team.

Compliance is organised into –

• a Product & Policy Compliance team
• a Review and Operational Compliance team.

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The roles we recruit for most often

There are a host of different specialist roles within Legal & Compliance – everything from Legal or Compliance Controller to Legal Secretary. Here are just a few that we recruit for most.

Legal

• Solicitor - Whether you join us from private practice or an in-house environment, you’ll need to be PC literate and team oriented with PQE in consumer contracts and financial services regulations.

Compliance

• Compliance Managers - You’d be responsible for providing specialist advice on sensitive or strategic issues and for carrying out strategic Compliance reviews.
• Junior Compliance Managers - As well as organising the way we offer advice and overseeing reviews, you could well find yourself making sure that our Compliance process operates effectively.
• Senior Compliance Consultants - You’d handle more complex Compliance issues and carry out planned Compliance reviews.

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What we look for

The roles in this area are typically specialist and the requirements vary greatly. However, the people who do well here tend to have certain skills and qualifications in common.

• Experience in a regulated environment, or within a Legal or Compliance function.
• An in-depth knowledge of relevant law and regulation.
• Solicitor, barrister, degree level or other legal or compliance qualifications where relevant.
• Qualifications related to the particular role e.g. CeFA, CMAP or Associate of the Compliance Institute.
• A law degree or equivalent qualification as a legal executive for certain roles.
• Previous experience in a banking/retail environment.
• A good knowledge of Nationwide products.
• Excellent decision-making skills and the ability to work in a pressurised environment.

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Your career prospects

Whatever role you join in, you’ll follow a structured career path – which could take you into other areas of the Nationwide Group. Legal & Compliance works hard to help its team members understand the internal and external business environment. The aim is to build a multi-skilled team where everyone can achieve their potential. Some of the internal courses to support this are:

• Intermediary Markets
• Group Economist and Planning
• Legal Compliance open day
• Operational Risk Framework
• Specialist Investigations Department (SID)
• Treasury.

On top of this we encourage you to benefit from external specialist training and exposure to industry working groups.

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Where you’d work

Legal & Compliance is mainly based at our Swindon Head Office although some of our Legal team also work out of our Northampton Head Office.

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