Team size: 52 

What significant projects or deals has the legal team worked on in the past year?  Can you provide examples of successful outcomes or major accomplishments?

The most visible public deal has been Nationwide’s ongoing £2.9 bn acquisition of Virgin Money which, subject to regulatory approvals, is expected to close in the Autumn of this year. This will be a transformational deal for Nationwide and, in many ways, we expect the hard work will truly begin when the deal closes, and the integration process gets underway.
In addition, we have led for the Building Society sector on achieving important legislative change to the Building Society Act; we have disposed of the Society’s investment advice business, and we have advised on the ramifications of the failure of a major third-party supplier.
However, the real strength of the function is its ability to manage these large scale and time-consuming one-off deals, projects or issues on-top of the considerable ‘day job’, despite being such a lean team.  
The last year has been typically demanding with function leadership and input required in relation to a suite of legal and regulatory initiatives and issues (e.g. Consumer Duty, Access to Cash, Open Banking), the development and launch of new products, including the second year in which Nationwide has offered qualifying members the unique £100 Fairer Share payment, managing the legal issues associated with the largest retail branch network in the UK as well as our other office buildings. In addition, we have handled the usual array of disputes and third-party contracts, both big and small, employment matters, capital markets work in support of our Treasury function and continuing to ensure we have a loud and effective voice externally.  

Can you sum up the team culture or ethos in one sentence, with an explanation?   

Driving the safe execution of Nationwide’s strategy through expert, commercial, pragmatic and timely legal and governance advice, support and guidance. 

The legal and secretariat function ‘purpose statement’ was most recently reviewed and refreshed following the launch by the then recently appointed CEO of the new Blueprint strategy for Nationwide, which clearly established a Society-wide purpose (the why) with a set of strategic drivers (the what) and set of expected behaviours (the how).  

As with any change in CEO and strategy, it is essential to understand and respond to changes with strategic focus at the organisational level and to any, often subtle, shifts in risk appetite.
Given that, we organised a facilitated offsite meeting for the senior leadership team in the legal and secretariat function to discuss this.  

How does the team measure performance?  

Clear and relatively detailed goals and objectives are set by the senior leadership team for the entire function at the start of each performance year.    

In addition, each line manager will agree one or two personal developments areas with their directs that merit focus.  

Demonstrable progress against the above is discussed in regular meetings and is more formally reviewed at half-year and year end.     

At half year and year-end, input from key stakeholders in the business and in other functions is sought and fed back. 

In addition, the more senior members of the function benefit from regular 360 feedback as part of the Society’s leadership training.