German Legal Counsel
iwoca, United Kingdom
Job Description
We believe we make a real difference to business owners, their teams, families and communities: they use our finance as superpower either to seize opportunities for growth or move their business out from under the shadow of cashflow. It’s our mission to finance a million businesses and we won’t accept a world where they have to jump through unnecessary hoops and wait weeks, even months, for a decision. With iwoca businesses get the right finance with a few clicks, when and where they need it.
Since our launch in 2012, we have stayed true to our goals, and are now one of the biggest fintechs in Europe. Along the way, we have revolutionised lending with our cutting-edge tech platform, earned numerous industry awards, and made over billions available to more than 100,000 businesses.
We are the leading and fastest growing Alternative Lender in the German market. A market that is still developing and we are there to shape it. Iwoca has established strong cooperations with the leading banks, financial advisors and platforms in Germany, like Commerzbank and eBay.
However, we’re still near the start of our journey our aim is to finance a million small businesses within a decade and so we need more smart, hands-on people to help us reach this goal.
We are recruiting a German qualified lawyer on a part-time basis to primarily work with our German business and report to iwoca’s Head of Legal.
Requirements
Day to day you will:
- Support and advise teams across the German business, including lending propositions (product development), customer acquisition, customer success, marketing and people ops (HR).
- Draft, review and negotiate partnership, customer and supplier contracts by providing pragmatic and commercial support
- identify and implement process improvements to make legal work more efficient, including building out and maintaining templates, playbooks and decision frameworks for our partnership and customer acquisition agreements
- Improve and maintain the business’ policies and procedures relating to GDPR for our key stakeholders - customers, employees and partners
- Instruct and manage external legal counsel, and manage legal budget with the guidance of the Head of Legal and GM of Germany
- Support any regulatory matters relating to licensing to lend to and collect from customers in Germany, and ensure our product complies with all elements of German law.
- Support corporate housekeeping, management of constitutional documents and statutory books, and ongoing filing requirements across our German entities.
There will be opportunities for you to:
- Advise and educate other members of the legal team on areas of your competence through formal and informal training
- Manage and mentor a German-speaking paralegal through tasks assigned to you
- Get involved more broadly with the Legal function, including in the UK and Luxembourg and any other jurisdiction in which we may operate
We are looking for:
- You are an experienced lawyer, qualified in Germany
- You are fluent in German and English
- You have experience in:
- commercial contracts, partnership and broker agreements
- GDPR and data protection laws, and have been involved in implementing policies and procedures to ensure compliance
- working in an in-house environment, particularly a fintech or finance business
- You are smart, meaning you:
- use thoughtful legal analysis to quickly cut through legal and commercial complexity
- give concrete feedback in a way that facilitates decision-making
- You are motivated, meaning you:
- go above and beyond to deliver high quality legal work in line with deadlines
- curious about all parts of the business and the challenges they face
- You are humble:
- no ego, we’re in it together
- you proactively reflect on individual and team performance on a task.
- understand where gaps exist in legal skills and knowledge and engage external counsel where appropriate.
- It would be also nice if you:
- have some knowledge and understanding of lending businesses, and the regulation applying to business lending in Germany
- have some experience with employment law issues
- have some experience of working with Luxembourg fund structures
- appreciate the importance of quantifying legal risk to inform decision-making
- are willing to work some of the time in one of our offices
- are interested in growing with our dynamic German business and, in the future, other countries in which we may operate
Benefits
We put a lot of effort into making iwoca a brilliant place to work:
- Offices in London, Leeds and Frankfurt
- Events and clubs, like bingo, comedy nights, yog