Senior Legal Counsel - SC Ventures at Standard Chartered Bank Kenya

Role Responsibilities 

• To lead and provide legal support and advice to individual ventures by:
• Attending weekly meetings with the different venture teams.
• Reviewing and advising on:
• vendor agreements,
• collaboration agreements;
• IT agreements;
• MoUs; and
• NDAs.
• Negotiating the above agreements with external parties.
• Drafting terms and conditions for the products to be rolled out by each venture.
• Reviewing and drafting privacy policies.
• Advising on each venture’s product strategy from a legal perspective.
• Reviewing internal documents for product testing and approvals.
• Engage and effectively manage external counsel.
• Incorporating companies.
• To provide legal support to the SC Ventures business unit as a whole by providing ad hoc advice and working on SC Venture projects.
• Provide support in the development of new contract checklists, standards and guidelines, and refresh templates that will be relevant to SC Ventures.
• Provide support to SC Ventures Legal on simplifying and improving delivery of legal services to SC Ventures.
• Provide support to SC Ventures Legal to ensure SC Ventures has requisite governance and oversight over ventures.
• Participate in SC Ventures team meetings, and implement vision and strategy for legal support of SC Ventures.

The experience you will gain:  

• You will have high visibility working with and building close relationships with stakeholders of each venture including the CEO, CIO, COO, CCO.   
• You will develop an understanding of the laws relating to each venture’s business including, fintech and technology law generally, digitization, data sharing, corporate governance, licensing requirements, insolvency, and other laws applicable to the business.
• You will learn how to develop a product and establish a venture from scratch, including effective working with commercial counterparts to go through process flows and understand the technology involved.

Our Ideal Candidate 

• Minimum 8+ year post qualification experience.  Preferably qualified to practice, and located, in Kenya.
• An understanding of the laws and regulations relating to fintech, technology, data protection and licensing requirements will be an advantage.
• Interest in and understanding of the developing regulatory Fintech environment; engagement of Fintech companies and implementing various commercial and cooperation models with third parties.
• Experience of structuring and executing a wide variety of business ventures and projects globally.
• Understanding of risk management techniques.
• Exemplary integrity, ethics, independence and resilience.

About SC Ventures   

SC Ventures is a business unit of Standard Chartered Bank which is a catalyst for the bank to promote innovation, invest in disruptive financial technology and explore alternative business models.

We are looking for a highly motivated lawyer who is hands on, business minded and who wants to gain venture building experience in the fast paced entrepreneurial environment in AFRICA.

You will be working on a number of exciting ventures based in Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria, for example:

• AGRITECH KENYA  – an online platform which helps farmers improve their crops, obtain financing and deliver produce to commercial kitchens within Africa.
• AQUATECH KENYA - an online platform which aims to address inefficiencies in the provision of utility services that prevent/delay access to clean water.
• SOLV (Kenya, Ghana & Nigeria) - following in the footsteps of Solv India, the different Solv teams in Africa will be creating an online platform which connect SMEs to financiers and other service providers via a “Marketplace”.

If you are interested in working on these ground-breaking ventures, other projects within the region, and want to be part of an amazing team, then we want to hear from you!

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity,  together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion. Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Be better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations
• Time-off including annual, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 weeks maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.

Recruitment assessments - some of our roles use assessments to help us understand how suitable you are for the role you've applied to. If you are invited to take an assessment, this is great news. It means your application has progressed to an important stage of our recruitment process