Senior Legal Counsel

About the team

Our Legal team plays a critical role in helping us deliver products and services that support millions of customers with their everyday financial needs. Working closely with colleagues across the business, they provide commercially-focused legal advice on a wide range of financial services matters, ensuring that our products are innovative, accessible and compliant, while maintaining great customer outcomes.

The team's work directly supports our purpose of helping families get more out of life. Whether enabling customers to access convenient payment solutions, protecting them through robust regulatory compliance, or supporting the development of new products and services, we help create safe, simple and trusted financial solutions that make a positive difference to people's everyday lives.

About the role

As a Senior Financial Services Solicitor, you'll have the chance to shape important initiatives, influence business decisions at a senior level and work alongside talented colleagues who are passionate about delivering great outcomes for our customers.

We're looking for a highly skilled Senior Legal Counsel with Financial Services experience to join our Legal team. You'll be a trusted partner to senior stakeholders across FS, Risk, Compliance, Product, Operations and Technology, providing pragmatic, commercially focused advice on consumer credit, regulated lending, payment services and broader financial services matters. You'll help shape product strategy, manage legal risk, and support our growth with compliant, customer centric solutions.

• Provide expert legal advice on UK financial services and consumer credit law (e.g., Consumer Credit Act, FCA Handbook, Consumer Duty), payment services, data protection, and broader financial services regulation.
• Advise on the design, launch and lifecycle of regulated products (e.g., credit accounts, BNPL, fixed sum loans, payment solutions), including terms, disclosures and customer communications.
• Draft, review and negotiate a wide range of commercial and FS agreements (e.g., outsourcing, servicing, technology, intermediated distribution, data sharing, sponsorship/partnerships, supplier contracts).
• Support regulatory change programmes (e.g., Consumer Duty enhancements, credit reforms, operational resilience, financial promotions) and horizon scan for emerging developments.
• Partner with Compliance and Risk to develop policy, governance and control frameworks; contribute to committee papers and board materials.
• Lead on incident management, complaints and remediation strategies, with a focus on fair customer outcomes.
• Manage engagement with the FCA and other regulators, including notifications, information requests and supervisory interactions.
• Provide clear, concise training and guidance to business teams; upskill colleagues on regulatory expectations and best practice.
• Instruct and manage external counsel effectively, controlling cost and ensuring high quality output.
• Mentor junior lawyers and contribute to continuous improvement across the legal function.

About you

• Qualified Solicitor in England & Wales with strong post qualification experience (typically 5+ PQE, but we're open to the right candidate).
• Deep knowledge of UK consumer credit and financial services regulation, with in house retail FS or top tier private practice experience.
• Proven track record advising on the end to end delivery of regulated products and financial promotions in a digital environment.
• Excellent drafting and negotiation skills; adept at turning complex regulation into practical advice.
• Comfortable operating in a fast paced, data driven environment with multiple priorities.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with the confidence to influence at senior levels.
• Sound judgement, high integrity, and a passion for delivering fair customer outcomes.
• Experience with operational resilience, outsourcing, data protection, and technology/supplier contracting is advantageous.

Some of our benefits

• Flexible, hybrid working model
• Inclusive culture and environment, check out our Glassdoor reviews

• £6,500 flexible benefits allowance to suit your needs
• 30 days holiday + bank holidays
• LinkedIn Learning access
• Bonus potential (performance and business related)
• Up to 25% discount on Very.co.uk

• Matched pension up to 6%
• More benefits can be found on our career site

Diversity, inclusion and equal opportunities

We're building a culture of everyday inclusion, and welcome applications from anyone who believes they can do the job. We don't discriminate based on age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.

We want our recruitment process to be accessible to everyone. If you need reasonable adjustments to apply, interview, or perform a role, let us know via . We'll be happy to support you.

We're proud to be a Disability Confident Committed Employer and have nine brilliant colleague networks - including DAWN (Disability Awareness at Very) and Think (Neurodiversity at Very) - that are helping us make Very an even more inclusive place to work.