Team size: Around 350
 

Key team members: The Senior Leadership Team in Legal and Secretariat includes: Kate Cheetham (chief legal officer and company secretary); Ajneet Jassey (General counsel – litigation and contentious regulatory), Ana Jordan (general counsel – insurance, pensions and investments), Joanna Carver (general counsel – group legal), Jon Alexander (general counsel – Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets), Nathan Butler (general counsel – BCB & CIB legal), Nicola Putland (corporate governance and operations director), Sharon Slattery (company Secretary – Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets), and Tom Spender (general counsel – consumer legal).  

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 team played a pivotal role on Lloyds Banking Group (LBG)’s proposed transfer of the c£6 bn Scottish Widows in-force bulk annuity portfolio, enabling LBG to focus on growing strategically important business lines such as insurance, investments, retirement and pensions, through direct and intermediary channels. The transaction (subject to regulatory approval) was initially structured as a reinsurance agreement for the in-force bulk portfolio, with a Part VII process to follow – both supported by L&S.  

Using collaboration and agile methodology, Legal and Secretariat (L&S) enabled the launches of Lloyds Bank 360, Digital Investment Advice, Ready Made Investments and Ready Made Pensions in support of LBG’s strategic priority to create a new, mass affluent offering. Using our unique ability to work across the Group, L&S advised on complex intra-group and third-party arrangements, plus consumer duty and ring-fencing, whilst navigating a highly regulated landscape to launch cutting-edge, digital first propositions.  

Furthermore, we advised on LBG’s strategic fintech investments into Coadjute (an innovative fintech designed to connect parties in the home ownership journey) and Enigio (to expand use of digital documentation in trade), drawing on experience to advise on the balance between risk appetite and speed of execution.  

The team supported the growth of the new Lloyds Technology Centre in Hyderabad – involving complex legal and regulatory issues such as ring-fencing and advising on governance matters. The opening of LTC forms part of LBG’s £3bn investment in its people, technology and data. 

Can you sum up the team culture or ethos in one sentence? How is this developed, and how does the team measure performance?  

At the heart of what we do is our ambition to be a multi-skilled, agile Legal and Secretariat function, capitalising on technology and informed by data. Our values of people-first, bold, inclusive, sustainable and trust are the foundation of our culture in L&S, to guide how we work together. Development is through our Future Ready strategy, using agile methodology to deliver actions under three pillars: technology, process and people. Under technology, our Innovation and Transformation Legal team shapes our technology roadmap and has launched a Power Platform Centre of Excellence, upskilling colleagues on Power Apps including developing an App to automate commercial contract legal risk reporting. We have used these skills in L&S to automate processes and create dashboards supporting data-driven decision-making (such as legal spend data). For our people, we launched our L&S Skills Framework (guidance on skills needed now and in the future) and rolled out targeted development programmes. Delivery of our L&S Culture Plan is key to our strategic vision, making L&S an even greater place to work. This year the L&S People and Culture Group has delivered engaging sessions on disability and neurodiversity, ethnicity, volunteering and colleague recognition. The L&S Health and Wellbeing workstream champions wellbeing initiatives across the function, including monthly “Wellbeing Matters” calls and influences Group priorities for health and wellbeing, advocating for L&S colleagues. L&S embraces the opportunity to help address economic, social and environmental challenges facing the UK, such as shaping uses cases and governance for the use of AI, partnering with law firms to provide pro-bono support to Centrepoint, and to mentor young people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Members of our L&S Senior Leadership Team are role models in their influential roles as the Chair of LBG’s Breakthrough women’s network, as trustees for LBG’s charitable foundations (partnering with small charities, people and communities working towards a more just and compassionate society) and as an Executive Ally for LBG’s social mobility agenda.