Legal Counsel CIB - Absa Bank

With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.

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Job Summary

To be responsible for identifying and managing legal risk for the Ghana business. You will be a key point of contact on a day-to-day basis for the business team and responsible for providing proactive legal advice, support, litigation and risk management. This role involves providing dedicated legal support, and putting in place a working model to maximize synergies between teams and business areas to ensure that they work together most effectively.

Job Description

Accountability: Management of Legal Risk

• To identify opportunities to develop new processes to strengthen the legal risk control framework.
• Effective management of legal risk and continuously improve controls and efficiency of processes (consistent and proactive approach).
• Manage, evaluate and prioritise tasks in accordance with business needs
• To communicate and distil legal concepts predominantly to Corporate and Investment Banking and Business Banking (CIB & BB) and other key stakeholders ensuring that lessons learned are communicated both within and outside the Ghana Legal function.
• Ensure effective and appropriate verbal and written communication of the legal policies to Ghana business.
• Proactive monitoring of compliance of the legal risk control framework.
• Immediately report any breach of the legal risk control framework to the head of his/her department.
• Immediately record legal risks on the legal risk reporting forms in an accurate manner and provide it to the head of the department.
• Act on legal risks notified in the legal risk reports, by raising it with the Ghana business stakeholders and addressing it as required to sufficiently remediate and mitigate future risk.
• Keep abreast of industry specific knowledge and key developments.
• Have knowledge of new regulatory requirements and provide comments to draft bills, regulatory documents and regulations issued by any governmental department and/or regulatory body.
• Ensuring that changes and developments in legislation and case law affecting the banking Industry and Absa Bank Ghana LTD’s operations are analysed, evaluated and reported.

Accountability: Legal advice, opinions and Litigation

• Ensure technical correctness of documents drafted by ensuring that the latest legal precedents have been included in the documents. This is done by doing regular research on legal developments and attending training interventions.
• To provide concise, accurate, timely legal advice predominantly to CIB & BB business stakeholders on a range of legal issues affecting CIB products and services.
• To provide legally sound solutions to the Ghana business problems.
• Have a good understanding of the financial and banking environment to be able to ensure that financial and business requirements are correctly incorporated in the documents.
• Ensure that all risks are sufficiently addressed in agreements entered by the bank; understanding the requirements of business, legal issues and possible business risks and incorporating clauses in the agreements to address such risks and requirements.
• At all times ensure that sufficient legal knowledge has been obtained and updated with latest legal developments to ensure that they are correctly reflected in the agreements drafted.
• Where relevant, ensure that all terms and conditions in approved term sheets or templates are incorporated in the necessary legal agreements by checking the term sheet against the legal agreement.
• Representing Absa Ghana in Court and assisting with management of Absa Ghana’s litigation portfolio.

Accountability: Negotiate, draft and review Agreements.

• Draft /vet and negotiate predominantly CIB & BB transaction documents, terms and conditions relating products, confidentiality agreements and other ad hoc legal agreements for CIB & BB and the business as a whole
• Help to develop working structures and best practice guides for use within business including responding to and/or assist Ghana in mitigating risk associated with predominantly – CIB & BB.
• Address all probable risks by seeing to it that they are sufficiently addressed in legal agreements drafted.
• Consider, comment, negotiate and give advice on documents/ agreements for the business.
• Give legal advice on transactions or deals to be done, or transactions that have been concluded.
• Conduct legal due diligences on transactions.
• Provide advice on legality, the lawfulness and enforceability of agreements and documents.
• To take principal responsibility for drafting and periodically reviewing predominantly CIB & BB Standard Terms or template documentation, in particular to deal with legal risk trends and opportunities to prevent recurrence and to improve business performance and recoveries.

Accountability: Stakeholder Management

• To build relationships with key senior stakeholders within the legal and business functions across CIB & BB and enabling functions and become a trusted advisor.
• Deliver superior client service and top-quality service delivery by focusing on:
  • Solution Orientated delivery
  • Prompt delivery
  • Business Enablement: Partnering
  • Business Enablement: Business Understanding
  • Control balanced against commerciality
• To be the point person for the business team for all legal matters.
• Meet with internal clients (relevant business unit or person within Business unit to whom legal service is provided not limited to CIB & BB on matters being worked on and to ensure that he/she understands the internal clients’ requirements and business.
• Explain legal concepts, clauses in agreements and risks to internal clients ( predominantly CIB & BB ).
• Provide training (induction trainings and refresher trainings) that is beneficial / informative to internal clients by way of presentations, such as training on new legislation or recent legal precedents.
• Manage external counsel where instructed on specific work. Represent CIB Legal on relevant industry forums and professional bodies where required. Attend external meetings with internal stakeholders, such as meetings with suppliers of the bank or attorneys of such bank suppliers.

Accountability: Legal Leadership

• Actively raise the profile of the Legal function and improve on Legal Key Risk management and awareness by embedding legal policies and control requirements in all areas of the business.
• Provide high quality support to the business as required by interacting with different legal and business stakeholders.
• Be an active and accountable member of the legal team by participating in initiatives and workstreams across Legal.
• Ensure values aligned behaviour is displayed in all methods of communication.
• Be a values ambassador for the Legal function.

Education And Technical Experience Required

• B Degree in law: LLB, B Juris or B Proc
• Admitted attorney or Advocate of the Ghana High Court
• Suitable post admission experience, ideally 5 years plus as in-house legal counsel in a financial institution, other corporate, reputable law firm or at the Bar.
• Experience with multijurisdictional transactions, legal issues of benefit and preferred property law, commercial property finance experience

Knowledge And Skills

• Strong knowledge of Banking and Finance law and regulatory environment
• Understanding of CIB business and product offerings
• Ability to engage and advise at senior business level and establish credibility quickly
• General knowledge of bank regulations required.

Competencies

• Ability to work as part of a high-performing team
• Shows resilience to change
• Very strong interpersonal skills, especially communication skills
• Well-organised and efficient
• Excellent negotiating and influencing skills
• Integrity and reliability
• Excellent attention to detail
• Business awareness, prioritisation of risk and strong commercial focus
• Ability to take a commercial view within legal constraints
• Ability to manage a large (and often fluid) workload with effective prioritisation as well as deliver under pressure and at speed
• Innovative and open to new ideas and ways of thinking

Education

Bachelor Honours Degree: Law, Military Science and Security (Required)