Associate General Counsel

Summary

Join Pathward as a Senior Vice President, Associate General Counsel, reporting to the Deputy General Counsel. You will oversee legal support for Commercial and Consumer Lending, ensuring compliance across various locations. Provide strategic legal advice, lead legal support for business lines, and manage a team. Responsibilities include contract negotiation, regulatory compliance, risk management, and collaboration with internal and external stakeholders. The role demands strong leadership, legal expertise in financial services, and experience navigating a complex regulatory environment. A competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package are offered.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree, Juris Doctor, authorized and licensed to practice law in at least one state
• A minimum of 10 years of legal experience in a combination of law firm and in-house roles, preferably with a significant amount of prior work experience in a senior legal role at a federally chartered bank
• Strong background in navigating compliance and regulatory challenges in a rapidly evolving consumer lending, payments or fintech environment
• Familiarity with and experience handling issues related to statutes, regulations, and interpretations in the consumer and commercial lending and banking arenas, including but not limited to, TILA and Regulation Z, EFTA and Regulation E, Durbin Amendment, GLBA, UDAAP/UDAP, ESIGN Act, BSA, AML, and OFAC, along with applicable corporate governance regulations and data security rules and guidelines (e.g., GDPR, PCI DSS, Safeguards Rule and CCPA)

Responsibilities

• Play a vital role on our legal team by providing timely, coordinated, and thoughtful strategic legal advice on a wide variety of legal, regulatory, compliance, and risk-management matters, grounded in applicable laws and tailored to the bank’s business needs
• This role requires proven leadership and management skills, along with the agility, flexibility and a sense of urgency and ownership that’s essential to executing in a highly regulated space
• This position interacts regularly with executive leadership, senior management, business units, and our bank’s clients’ legal, risk and compliance teams
• Lead and manage legal support and guidance for commercial finance and consumer marketplace lending business lines, from initial due diligence through ongoing program management
• Review and negotiate contracts with partners, advising the Bank on potential legal and regulatory concerns, including state and federal consumer protection, card network rules, payments, privacy, and other applicable laws and regulations
• This position may also support other business lines, such as our tax solutions business
• Strengths regarding a wide array of commercial finance products including structured finance, working capital, equipment finance and asset based lending, as well as in consumer lending (particularly in the unsecured marketplace lending space), compliance, credit, litigation, and regulatory issues for a federally chartered bank, particularly as applied to the Banking-as-a-Service or partnership banking model, oversight over a Bank’s third-party relationships and service providers
• Provide leadership and direction through Senior Managers and Managers
• Participate with other senior managers to establish strategic plans and Make final decisions on administrative or operational matters and ensure operations effective achievement of objectives
• Work on complex issues where analysis of situations or data requires an in-depth knowledge of the company
• Participates in corporate development of methods, techniques and evaluation criteria for projects, programs, and people
• Direct and control the activities of a broad functional area through several department managers within the company
• Has overall control of planning, staffing, budgeting, managing expense priorities, and recommending and implementing changes to methods
• Research, analyze, and interpret proposed and existing laws, statutes, and regulations
• Provide legal support and guidance on enterprise-wide regulatory reporting, risk and compliance projects
• Conduct impact assessments for new products, services, and business initiatives to identify and mitigate risks
• Ensure that the organization's risk management policies and strategies align with applicable regulations and the organization's strategic goals, while supporting audits, examinations, and risk assessments
• Partner with Risk, Compliance, Internal Audit, Finance, and Government Relations to provide legal expertise and guidance on regulatory issuances and rulemakings
• Engage in cross-functional legal collaboration to drive positive business results, align with the Bank's long-term goals, mitigate risks, and maximize value
• Engage outside counsel as needed to ensure efficient completion of legal assignments within budget constraints
• Represents/advocates for an organization in litigation, arbitration, mediation or other disputes with courts, government agencies, or other legal authorities

Preferred Qualifications

Interactions with federal regulators, such as the OCC, Federal Reserve, or FDIC is a plus

Benefits

• Health insurance
• 401(k) retirement benefits
• Life insurance
• Disability benefits
• Paid time off