Director & Counsel - Consumer Litigation

With the right backing, people and businesses have the power to progress in incredible ways. When you join Team Amex, you become part of a global and diverse community of colleagues with an unwavering commitment to back our customers, communities and each other. Here, you’ll learn and grow as we help you create a career journey that’s unique and meaningful to you with benefits, programs, and flexibility that support you personally and professionally.

At American Express, you’ll be recognized for your contributions, leadership, and impact—every colleague has the opportunity to share in the company’s success. Together, we’ll win as a team, striving to uphold our company values and powerful backing promise to provide the world’s best customer experience every day. And we’ll do it with the utmost integrity, and in an environment where everyone is seen, heard and feels like they belong.

Join Team Amex and lets lead the way together.

The Role

We are looking for an experienced litigation lawyer for the role of Director & Counsel, reporting directly to the EMEA Vice President & Senior Counsel In the Litigation and Investigations Team overseeing mainly the Consumer world.

In this role you will be based at Belgrave House in London (minimum 3 days in-office), and will play an integral part of the legal team who sit within the General Counsels Organization (“GCO”). You will play a key role as trusted advisor in the GCO and provide key support and advice predominantly on the UK Consumer business line. You will partner closely with other teams dedicated to the support of this business line within and outside the GCO. Given the international breath of the Team’s remit, though, you will also play a crucial role in advising Business and GCO Colleagues of different Markets on mitigation risk strategies, in collaboration where necessary with local Outside Counsel, or supporting the delivery of trainings and/or participating or leading projects especially where there is a consumer related angle.

You will be responsible for managing your own portfolio of UK consumer related matters varying from litigation to advisory matters, as well as managing a paralegal and any more junior lawyers in the team from time to time. You will closely support and become a trusted advisor to colleagues and stakeholders of all levels from all business units, particularly senior leaders in the GCO or Business such as the UK Country Manager and the Head of Amex’s UK consumer lending, as well as merchant businesses.

You will also provide legal advice and support to Amex’s businesses and management throughout the Europe, Middle East and Africa (“EMEA”) region in connection with a broad range of contentious or non-contentious, consumer and non-related issues.

The role will also require ability to manage other work varying in significance and complexity and will include civil/commercial litigation as well as contentious financial regulatory issues.

The work involved and related responsibilities will include the following:

• Mainly leading the conduct of Consumer litigation, managing and advising stakeholders of all levels of seniority on the strategy, merits, brand and litigation risks of a wide range of pre-action and issued consumer litigation types, including:

o Section 75 Consumer Credit Act 1974 (“CCA”) claims - including a fortnightly advice clinic to the Section 75 claims handling team;

o Data privacy related claims;

o Equality Act 2010 issues;

o Unfair relationship claims under s140A CCA including PPI;

o Unauthorised and authorised fraud claims under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 and/or CCA regimes;

o Alleged breaches of FCA handbook rules (e.g. CONC); and

o Contractual disputes arising during the life of a consumer product.

• Advising on and inputting into submissions to the Financial Ombudsman Service for escalated and complex complaints in a post-Consumer Duty context.

• Advising on complex complaints in a post-Consumer Duty context.

• Selecting, instructing and managing local external counsel to defend pre-action and issued customer claims or provide advice notes. To include critical analysis of recommendations, canvassing and balancing differing stakeholder views, document retrieval (with paralegal assistance) and managing fee budgets to ensure good business outcomes.

• Establishing yourself as one the main point of reference of the Consumer Litigation Team for other teams which you will work closely with, such as Compliance, S. 75 Team, PPI, FOS team, regulatory team etc.

• Encouraging a cross-function approach of bringing others with you when advising business colleagues in relation to customer matters in order to ensure quality, holistic risk-based advice is given. To include partnering with key control functions and SMEs (including Compliance, Credit & Fraud Risk, Corporate Affairs & Communications), line of business lawyers and specialist subject matter lawyers (e.g. Consumer, Privacy, Regulatory)

• Communicating concise advice, at pace, adapted to senior stakeholders requirements in a mix of written, verbal and PowerPoint presentation formats.

• Ability to challenge the status quo but at the same time be able to understand the stakeholders’ goals to enable them to achieve them in the best way as way in the less risky way possible.

• Ability to manage challenging conversations or deliver uncomfortable messages to our stakeholders

• Promoting efficiency in all that the team does by preparing and making use of templates, flowcharts, established frameworks and capturing know-how management on our internal document management platform(s).

• Providing drafting support to line of business lawyers engaged with drafting a wide range of contracts, advising in particular on contractual clauses in the litigation context (e.g. ADR, limitation of liability and liability caps, governing law and jurisdiction, indemnities, third party rights, conduct of claims).

• Supporting with confidential investigations, sometimes of a regulatory nature or consumer related.

• Leading on or supporting on projects centred on the consumer space, assessing when other legal and business teams might need to be involved-partnering with you for the success of the project.

• Leading and Delivering in-person and remote training sessions in order to upskill colleagues and raise awareness or flag risks on specific topics, especially on the consumer world.

• Advising upon the nature and effect of court orders received in connection with consumers and business clients (e.g. freezing orders; third party debt orders; etc).

• Advising internal merchant risk and collections teams on financial recovery issues, including those arising out of domestic and cross-border insolvencies in both the consumer and, occasionally, merchant context.

• Working with locally qualified internal lawyers through the EMEA/international Markets to provide strategic and risk-based consumer matters related advice.

• Assisting in maintaining litigation reporting case management system and database for the preparation of reports and in order to comply with regulatory requirements and respond to internal and external audits.

• Assisting in building processes and risk escalation frameworks which enable more efficient and accurate tracking and better management of litigation, trend spotting, and outside counsel budgets throughout the region.

• Managing internal financial accounting processes including litigation reserve setting and liaising with Controllership and internal auditors.

Required Qualifications:

• Candidates must have significant PQE Solicitor qualified in England & Wales with extensive experience in a wide range of civil litigation at all stages gained in a financial services context, with a main focus on consumer litigation.

• The candidate must have extensive experience with section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, PPI, and strong knowledge of the Consumer Duty is required as well as Financial services litigation in a consumer credit context.

• Relevant experience should have been obtained in a strong private practice law firm and at least 5 years of in-house experience with another significant financial institution.

• Experience of managing or working with foreign lawyers, or cross-border litigation where cases span several jurisdictions would be an advantage.

• Experience of managing junior lawyers or paralegals desirable.

• Experience of managing/conducting consumer litigation (as a team leader or member) and experience of running case-load of smaller cases, and managing the strategy of specific case portfolios, such as Group Litigation Orders is required.

Skills:

• Fluency in spoken and written English is essential.

• Familiarity with other European languages an advantage, but not a pre-requisite.

• Competency with office software essential (Outlook, Powerpoint, Word etc.)

• Commercial Acumen, team spirit, initiative/proactiveness but at the same time an ability to follow instructions are key to this role.

Competencies:

• Ability to manage and adapt to different working and communication styles according to the different level of internal stakeholders, always enabling stakeholders and GCO colleagues to maintain an open and constructive communication channel.

• Flexibility – the role will mainly rotate about the Consumer Uk World but there is a broad range of work. The successful candidate will be involved in work at all levels and should be prepared to ‘roll up his/her sleeves’.

• Resourcefulness and commercial awareness – ability to respond to business issues often under critical time pressure.

• Ability to raise awareness when certain gaps identified, propose remedial actions, delivery of trainings including but not limited to, to upskill colleagues where deemed necessary

• Communication skills – ability to relay precise information orally and in writing in a concise manner.

• Ability to work independently - to include preparedness to take the lead in making appropriate recommendations but equally ability to escalate to senior leaders without any delay.

• Client Focus – ability to deliver excellent levels of client service.

• Excellent Team approach - ability to promote collaboration within own peer group and throughout the organization, across different teams acting as people leader at all times

• People management skills – ability to nurture talent and further development of more junior members of the team.

• Excellent strength and sound judgment – ability to distil information rapidly in order to identify and advise upon key legal and business issues; ability to identify when to escalate issues to line manager.

This role provides fantastic scope for development within an in-house legal team and excellent exposure to senior stakeholders as well as global markets.

We back our colleagues and their loved ones with benefits and programs that support their holistic well-being. That means we prioritize their physical, financial, and mental health through each stage of life. Benefits include:

• Competitive base salaries

• Bonus incentives

• Support for financial-well-being and retirement

• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and disability benefits (depending on location)

• Flexible working model with hybrid, onsite or virtual arrangements depending on role and business need

• Generous paid parental leave policies (depending on your location)

• Free access to global on-site wellness centers staffed with nurses and doctors (depending on location)

• Free and confidential counseling support through our Healthy Minds program

• Career development and training opportunities