Legal Counsel - Pensions

At Smart, our mission is to transform retirement, savings and financial wellbeing, across all generations, around the world.

THE ROLE

With the continued growth of the Smart Pension Master Trust, which now exceeds £11 billion AUM, we are looking for a pensions lawyer to join our in-house legal team and work with our senior pensions lawyer to advise on pensions law and the taxation of pensions schemes.

Smart is a fast paced growing FinTech and the work will vary from working alongside our compliance and operations teams advising on day to day operations of the Master Trust to strategic advice on the implementation of new products. You may also be expected to attend some Trustee meetings and sub-committee meetings.

Key Responsibilities:

• Advising on legal and regulatory requirements for bulk transfers into the Smart Pension Master Trust (both with and without member consent), including drafting, reviewing and negotiating transfer agreements, data sharing agreements, and pre-funding arrangements.

• Liaising with the Implementation team to coordinate transfers to the Smart Pension Master Trust.

• Reviewing member communications and marketing materials for legal compliance.

• Supporting governance, compliance and risk management activities.

• Interpreting and implementing pensions legislative and regulatory change.

• Working closely with the Governance team to support the Trustee, including preparing papers for Trustee Board and Sub-committee meetings.

• Advising operational and member-services teams on complex pension legal issues.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR

The skills, experience, and aptitudes we are looking for are listed below but please don’t be discouraged from applying if you don’t meet every single one of these criteria – having a ‘can do’ attitude is sometimes more important than being able to tick every box:

• Experienced pensions lawyer (around 2 years plus PQE), ideally with DC scheme experience.

• Confident and pragmatic approach to problem solving and managing legal risk.

• Proven ability to deal with ambiguity and work well in a fast-paced environment to meet deadlines within short time constraints whilst maintaining the utmost attention to detail.

• Ability to navigate the complexities of multiple internal and external stakeholders including our senior leadership team, with strong written and verbal communication skills.

• Experience of financial services regulatory regime would be an advantage.

WHO WE ARE

We work in partnerships with governments and financial institutions in the UK and internationally. Our cloud-native digital platform is revolutionising how people around the world think about, and save for, their retirement.

At heart, we’re a financial technology business. What we do is all about innovation, and using the power of digital change to put the customer first. Our Engineers will tell you that working at Smart gives you the opportunity to play your part in developing world-class technological solutions, working with – and learning from – like-minded people.

You’ll also find that, across our business, our colleagues love Smart’s culture, and how what we do means better financial outcomes for savers. That feels worthwhile, and it means that what we do, collectively, goes way beyond the nine to five of a typical working day.

Don’t just take our word for it – you can see what our colleagues say about working at Smart on LinkedIn Life and Glassdoor.

BENEFITS

At Smart, one of the eight principles we work to is “We want happy and good people in our team”. We created a list of benefits that helps us achieve this goal:

• 25 days’ holiday per year, increasing with length of service.

• £500 annual training budget to spend on your professional development

• Extensive private healthcare, including dental, eyecare and EAP

• Enhanced sick leave (three months’ pay per year)

• Enhanced maternity and paternity (maternity – 6 months fully paid/paternity – 3 weeks fully paid)

• Death in service insurance cover

• Fully-paid five-week sabbatical after five years of employment

• In office wellbeing, such as manicures, massages and barbers. 

• Smart employees also enjoy a 50% discount on orders from our sister company Arena Flowers, Britain's most ethical florist. They offer unique hand-tied bouquets, luxury flowers, letterbox flowers, plants and gifts to spend on friends and loved ones or even for yourself.

At Smart, we are committed to creating an inclusive and equitable workplace where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered to do their best work.

We believe that diverse perspectives help us lead the way in transforming retirement, savings, and financial wellbeing. We welcome differences in background, experience, thinking, and identity, and we recognise that innovation is strongest when it is built on inclusion and fairness. We encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and experiences and do not discriminate on the basis of any protected characteristic.

If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process or in the workplace, we encourage you to let us know - we are committed to supporting you.

We think Smart is an awesome place to work. If it sounds like somewhere you’d like to work, too, and if you’re ready to play your part in our continued success in the future, then naturally we’d love to meet you.