Team size: Approximately 325

What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Among the most significant cases our legal team has been involved in, we would highlight our group’s acquisition of Embark, an investment and retirement platform business, in January 2022. This acquisition provides a digital, mass market, direct-to-consumer proposition, complementing the group’s wealth proposition and strengthening the Group’s offering in retirement.

Another significant effort made by the legal team has been providing ongoing support to a range of measures introduced to help customers throughout the pandemic. Since the pandemic began, our group supported over 350,000 businesses affected by Covid-19, by lending them over £13bn through the various UK Government lending schemes, as well as providing overdraft extensions and capital repayment holidays on their other borrowing.

Moreover, we advised and supported a range of ESG initiatives including new product development and enhanced capabilities, such as electric vehicles funding, green mortgage lending and other ESG-related finance the group provided to various businesses.

Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most? Which have you found most useful in your legal team?

Technology that frees up the team’s time so that they can focus on strategic matters is increasingly important. New ways of working solutions developed during the pandemic provided opportunities to become more agile and collaborative across different locations, by utilising hybrid meeting communication tools. A sub-team focussing on digital, and data introduced new technology to simplify intake and triage of stakeholder requests for legal support, to enable quick self-service capability where possible.

A combination of legal technological advancements and process efficiencies that tie in with existing infrastructures will drive data enabled decision-making, increased collaboration and more effective risk management. More effective automation of third-party contract reviews will enable standardised approaches at scale to allow stakeholders to self-serve in a structured and controlled manner where possible.

How has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected your company and the team’s priorities? 

Sustainability and supporting the transition to a low carbon economy is core to the Group’s strategy and purpose. The Group has prioritised achieving net zero in its own operations by 2030, and for those it finances by 2050. As well as seizing climate-related opportunities, the group is focused on identifying and managing climate-related risks.

The legal team sits at the core of the group’s ESG priorities working on related product development, on enhanced reporting requirements, and on changes to policy, legislation and regulation.