Team size: 16, across both the Legal and Compliance functions

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

It has been an incredibly exciting twelve months, with both the business and the Legal team undergoing significant change and growth. I worked closely with the management team as we guided the business through an exit for our previous PE investor and the transition into the Bridgepoint investment portfolio in November 2025. This was the culmination of a huge amount of work over the preceding year, and a real personal challenge as I balanced leading the transaction support with the day-to-day running of the team – all with a newborn at home, born in April 2025!

Post-transaction, we brought in a head of legal who quickly established herself with senior stakeholders across the business; she has already led the negotiation of a key exclusive commercial arrangement with ClearScore, which is work I would previously have had to lead directly. A new legal counsel also joined in March 2026 and is already supporting key projects, including the onboarding of a new contract management tool. The team is now structured to support the business through its next phase of growth, freeing me to focus on more strategic business support.

What do you see as an opportunity or risk over the next six months?

A high-growth environment – particularly post-transaction – is an exciting place to be and work, but this brings risks as much as it presents opportunities. The business understandably wants to move fast and has a tonne of great ideas; it’s on us to identify where we need to slow down and take stock, and where we can crack on with the key risks covered. Like most in-house legal functions, we do this with a small, agile team, which creates resource challenges as the business scales around us. A key goal I have set myself is to make the best use of the individual skills across the team – including understanding where AI tools can enhance our output and better serve our clients across the business.

In your role, how do you balance the need to protect the organisation’s interests today while also considering legal implications and opportunities that may arise in the future?

In a high-growth FinTech environment, where innovation is core to how the business operates, the legal team must support that pace while balancing the risks of moving quickly. “Risk” language helps navigate these conversations – but risk is not just the chance of legal liability or regulatory issues. Take AI: the security, operational, privacy and commercial risks are well known. But what about the risk of not acting – falling behind competitors or failing to enhance the customer journey with complementary tooling? The legal team’s role is to help frame both sides of that equation.

General counsel often speak of the need to be strategic to reach the pinnacle of the profession. What does being strategic mean to you?

The further you progress within an organisation, the less your day-to-day is about traditional legal skills – drafting, reviewing, litigating. Stakeholders take it as a given that your advice has a solid legal foundation; the conversation instead focuses on your input as a senior leader who understands the business, the market and the challenges being faced. Your voice, rather than your legal skills, is what matters in those settings. Recognising this – while ensuring the core legal issues are still surfaced, understood and addressed – is the essence of being “strategic” in-house.