We have an opportunity for an experienced Associate Solicitor to join our growing risk and compliance team (Business Excellence) based from either our Southampton or Bristol office and play a key role with day to day responsibility for all matters within our compliance and audit function.  

You will report to the Executive Director - Risk & Compliance who heads this function, and in turn reports directly to the General Risk Counsel (GRC) Matthew Sturgeon, who leads the Business Excellence Team and risk management here at Foot Anstey and in its wider Group. 

The Team

The Business Excellence team is made up of 8 professionals, 5 of whom are solicitors, focusing on risk and compliance. The team's four main areas are: compliance and audit; claims, complaints and quality; data protection and supply chain management; and strategic and other firmwide risk management including business continuity. 

Our vision is for a market-leading risk team: commercially-aware; highly capable; bringing holistic risk management to every part of the business; and of considerable value to the firm, supporting it to do its best work for clients, safely.  

What you'll do

• Be primary reference point on compliance and related risk queries including on the Codes of Conduct (including client care, conflicts, confidentiality and information barriers), financial crime (particularly anti-bribery, and AML including sanctions and high-risk third country due diligence), limiting liability, supervision, audit and file review
• Responsible for the maintenance of the firm's regulatory breach register and advising on responses and remedial actions following any breaches
• Assist with implementing and the effective operation of business acceptance/file-opening systems including electronic PEP and sanctions searches
• Draft, amend, implement and ensure consistent adherence to the firm's risk and compliance policies and procedures
• Take a lead role in conducting internal file and supervisory audit, including reporting and any follow-up
• Assist with responding to client questionnaires, tenders, etc as regards compliance and audit
• Strive for continuous risk and compliance improvement
• When ready, be Deputy MLRO

What we need

• A solicitor with 5-8 years PQE with strong knowledge of AML, the Codes of Conduct and the wider SRA regime
• Solid analytical and drafting skills  
• Commercial and pragmatic with sound judgment and decision-making skills
• Strong communicator, with measured approach which instils confidence and sense of support whilst delivering appropriate risk and compliance message 
• Team-centric, relationship-builder
• Service-focused, quality-driven and can-do attitude 
• Resilient, with energy and enthusiasm for enhancing risk management

Our offer to you

In return for your efforts, you can expect considerable scope for personal as well as professional development. We encourage people to engage with our popular and well supported coaching and mentoring programmes, which connect you to people right across the firm and at every level. We create space for mental and physical wellbeing with our weekly Lifestyle Hour, along with 28 days annual leave (plus a day in your birthday month), private medical insurance (eligibility applies) and a sabbatical you can take every 5 years. You can also buy holiday, managing your benefits flexibly using our sophisticated portal to configure your total reward offer according to what you value most. As part of this, you can make ongoing or one-off donations to our charitable foundation and access our CSR programme where you can engage with community-based initiatives (as a team, or individually) twice a year, to give something back where you feel it matters.

For further details of our benefits packages, please visit the link attached – Our benefits | Foot Anstey

Successful applicants will be required to complete a pre-employment screening process which includes a financial integrity check and a DBS check. If you wish to discuss any issues or questions in connection with this, or anything else, please do speak in confidence with a member of the Talent Acquisition Team: [email protected]

Why Foot Anstey?

As one of the UK’s fastest growing law firms, Foot Anstey believes in helping our clients and people achieve their ambitions, unlocking new and exciting opportunities. Our team of business and legal advisors are motivated by understanding clients’ goals and collaborating with them and other advisers to deliver solutions.  By becoming our clients’ most trusted advisor, we are enabling them to achieve their ambitions. How we do it is just as important as what we do. Our values define the way we act with our clients and one another every day, and because of these we think our culture and environment sets us apart.

Over our history we’ve grown from a high-street firm to a significant regional and national player working with leading brands and individuals predominantly across six key sectors: Private Equity, Retail & Consumer, Energy & Infrastructure, Islamic Finance, Developers and Private Wealth. Our strategy of gaining market share through meeting clients’ needs, investing in and developing high quality talent and using technology and innovation to enhance our services has led to significant growth. We now operate from nine locations: Truro, Plymouth, Exeter, Taunton, Bristol, Southampton and London, as well as a ‘hub’ base in Manchester, Oxford and Guildford

Our people are central to our success, in every part of the business. We actively support our employees to achieve their aspirations through offering meaningful careers with balanced rewards, which have been carefully designed to focus on personal wellbeing. We offer continual opportunities for support and professional development through our Business Skills Academy and Digital Skills Academy and believe in empowering each other to achieve and strive to create a progressive and inclusive working environment. Being forward-thinking, we are open to discussing flexible working patterns for all of our vacancies, with over 40% of our existing employees having a permanent flexible working pattern. In addition, our impressive suite of flexible benefits will enable you to prioritise what matters most to you.

Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace is integral to delivering our strategy, and we were delighted to be awarded the National Equality Standard for a second time. We consider this to be right at the heart of our priorities and goes way beyond our policies – it’s something we consider across everything we do, from the make-up of our client teams, encouraging staff to reach their potential, through to our leadership. We aim to support our clients and our people to achieve their goals, regardless of background, gender, race, beliefs, sexuality or other non-work related factors. We champion aspiration and encourage it in everyone that works with us. As such we actively encourage applications from all suitably qualified people, regardless of any characteristics protected by law. If you apply for this role, you may be encouraged to answer our diversity and social mobility monitoring questions, so please be reassured that any answers you provide will remain entirely anonymous and confidential and will in no way impact your application.

Foot Anstey. Seriously Ambitious.