Company Description

Legal & General (L&G) is a leading UK financial services group and major global investor.

We’ve been safeguarding people’s financial futures since 1836, and strive to build a better society, while improving the lives of our customers and creating value for shareholders.

We are one of the world’s largest asset managers and provide powerful asset origination capabilities. Together, these underpin our retirement and protection solutions: we are an international player in pension risk transfer, in UK and US life insurance, and in UK workplace pensions and retirement income.

L&G Institutional Retirement looks after around 700,000 institutional customers who have their retirement benefits secured with us. Operating continuously in the UK market from our entrance in 1987, we are the UK’s longest-running insurer.

Our Institutional Retirement division provides pension risk transfer (PRT) solutions for UK and US defined benefit (DB) schemes, and reinsurance solutions from our global hub in Bermuda. We work with companies, DB pension schemes and their advisors to help them secure and protect scheme members’ retirement benefits.

Joining us means you’ll support customers’ financial security in retirement; help companies to settle their pension liabilities and focus on growing their businesses; and enable investment for the long term to back our pension promises.

Job Description

We’re recruiting a Legal Counsel to support the Institutional Retirement and Annuities legal team in providing first class legal and governance advice. The role holder will be part of the Institutional Retirement and Annuities legal team, which is a close-knit team comprising seven lawyers.

The team:

• PRT - delivers corporate transactions (pension risk transfer (“PRT”) and reinsurance) ranging from up to £100m to £5bn plus, as well as a wide variety of post transaction and general advisory support. The transactions we write are often novel and complex and Legal & General is at the forefront of this busy and growing market that, in aggregate, wrote c£45-£50bn of transactions in 2024; and
• Annuities - supports the implementation of PRT contracts, responding to queries in relation to their ongoing administration, preparing amendments and advising on customer facing legal queries. We also advise the Retail division in relation to retail products offered directly to customers and via advisers and partners. Providing PRT and Annuities legal support means that we ensure consistency and efficiency across two of Legal & General’s core divisions.

The role holder will spend c.75% of their time on Annuities and c.25% on PRT, fluctuating depending on the relative needs of each. Work across Annuities and PRT will enable the role holder to understand the end-to-end journey (from inception of a PRT policy to payment to annuitants), to allow them to support cross-divisional continuous improvement projects and increased efficiency across the business units. Someone who has an interest in problem solving and focus on efficiency is key.

We are looking for a versatile lawyer who is interested in a wide-ranging commercial, advisory and transactional role. We expect that the right person might currently be either (a) an in-house lawyer in a financial services, insurance or pensions organisation, or (b) a private practice lawyer with a corporate, commercial, pensions, financial services or insurance background.

Interest and enthusiasm for learning new things, working with a range of business stakeholders, finding solutions to complex problems, delivering deals and focus on the customer is essential. Knowledge of the PRT/Annuities market and regulatory environment in relation to it is useful but not a pre-requisite.

Joining us means you’ll support customers’ financial security in retirement; help companies to settle their pension liabilities and focus on growing their businesses; and enable investment for the long term to back our pension promises.

What you'll be doing:

• Providing day-to-day support to the Institutional Retirement and Retail business with implementation of annuities and ongoing advisory matters in relation to them (this will be the focus of the role).
• Structuring, negotiation, execution and management of transactions, taking responsibility for transaction documents, including term sheets and other early stage documentation and long-form documentation, with assistance from external counsel where required. This will be a secondary focus of the role.
• Providing governance support to Legal & General Group Plc and Group subsidiary companies with respect to transactions, including ensuring legal risks are appropriately reported.
• Working collaboratively with the relevant internal stakeholders including company secretarial, finance/accounting, tax, treasury, risk and board support in order to ensure a joined up approach on responses to legal queries and transactions and so that the strategic and commercial objectives of the Group are achieved.
• Managing external counsel, key stakeholders and other third parties and to ensure business costs are kept to a minimum and manage external legal advice to ensure sound and commercially useful advice is provided to the business.
• Supporting the on-going development of L&G standard form documentation, co-ordinating with external counsel and internal advisory functions for ongoing legal education and training.

Qualifications

Who we're looking for:

• Experience in advising on and negotiating, executing and managing contracts is necessary. Experience of doing this in a transactional role is helpful.
• Experience in providing advice in relation to pensions, insurance or regulatory issues is helpful.
• An enthusiastic individual with a willingness to learn, a drive to ensure efficiency and focus on continuous improvement.
• Ability to provide clear, commercially focussed advice to meet business’ objectives.
• Able to identify potential problems, escalating where necessary and contribute to identification of solutions.
• Experiences in summarising complex issues in simple, easy to understand terms.
• Knowledge and understanding of the legal and regulatory requirements for a major financial services group and an understanding of the general business and financial services environment and regulatory business requirements and its impact on the Legal & General Group’s strategy would be helpful, but is not a pre-requisite. All training will be provided.
• 3 years minimum post qualification experience
• 2.1 or above degree from a UK university (or a similar level of qualification gained from a non-UK university).

Whatever your role, we reward performance and behaviour with a package that looks after all the things that are important to you. Here are some of the benefits we offer:

• The opportunity to participate in our annual, performance -related bonus plan and valuable share schemes
• Generous pension contribution
• Life assurance
• Healthcare Plan (permanent employees only)
• At least 25 days holiday, plus public holidays, 26 days after 2 years’ service. There’s also the option to buy and sell holiday
• Competitive family leave
• Participate in our electric car scheme, which offers employees the option to hire a brand-new electric car through tax efficient salary sacrifice (permanent employees only)
• There are the many discounts we offer – both for our own products and at a range of high street stores and online
• In 2023, some of our workspaces were redesigned. Our offices are great spaces to connect and collaborate and have your wellbeing at the heart

Additional Information

Legal & General is a leading financial services group and major global investor, named Britain’s Most Admired Company in 2023, for the second year running. Rated top in our sector and top for inspirational leadership, we have a strong heritage and an exciting future.

We aim to build a better society for the long term by investing our customers’ money in things that make life better for everyone.

If you join us, you’ll be part of a welcoming culture, with opportunities to collaborate with people of diverse backgrounds, views and experiences. Guided by leaders with integrity who care about your future and wellbeing. Empowered through initiatives which support people to develop their careers and excel.

We strive to be open, mindful and inclusive, so are always willing to discussing flexible working arrangements and reasonable accommodations for candidates with specific needs.

If you’re open to find out more, we'd love to hear from you.