Legal Counsel

Job description

We have an outstanding new opportunity for a mid-level lawyer to join our Aviva UK General Insurance (UKGI) legal team, with primary focus on supporting our UK Health business.

It’s an opportunity like no other - as well as working in-house for the UK’s largest insurer, we are a busy and strategically important team, sitting at the heart of our business's core purpose to help our customers by being with them today, for a better tomorrow.

Our Health legal team supports Aviva's UK Health business on a wide variety of matters, including: the full suite of UK health insurance and non-insurance products & propositions, their distribution, and any contentious issues, as well as contract negotiation, and general legal advice on day-to-day issues and queries that arise. A strong opportunity to upskill in many of these areas.

In this role, you’ll gain broad legal and commercial experience, working with other colleagues in the UKGI legal team, and wider UK legal function. This person will develop relationships with colleagues within and outside our local team, and build an understanding of Aviva, our products and the insurance industry more generally. You’ll work closely with senior colleagues within the Aviva business, Risk and Governance functions and with third parties, as required.

We’re a collaborative team based in Norwich, so ideally the role will be based there, however other office locations can be considered. Regardless of where the role is based, travel to other offices may sometimes be required, once business and workplaces are open regularly again.

This is a role where we would consider part-time hours for those with the desired skill set.

The role’s duties & responsibilities

On a day to day basis, this could be:

• Working collaboratively with members of the Health and wider UKGI legal team
• Providing high quality, pragmatic legal advice for the UK Health business across a broad range of contracts, projects, products and propositions
• Building trusted advisor relationships with a number of key business partners within Aviva
• Identifying and mitigating legal risks and raising key risks and issues to the Senior Lawyers, Director of Legal or General Counsel of UKI, as appropriate
• Providing input into board, committee and other papers

Skills & experiences required:

• A qualified lawyer with mid-level PQE and a strong academic background
• Solid understanding and experience in Contract Law is essential
• Relevant in-house and/or private practice experience, ideally in the insurance or financial services industry and familiarity with regulations
• Strong negotiation and influencing skills, alongside a commercial acumen and pragmatic mindset, and strong analytical skills
• A high degree of flexibility and self-motivation - enjoys working in fast paced and dynamic environment, ability to assess workload and prioritise effectively
• Proven track record to work with people at different levels and from different backgrounds

Any experience and knowledge of insurance or other regulated financial services in the UK and associated law and regulation would be beneficial but is not essential and can be acquired.

What we want you to bring:

• Versatility and resourcefulness in dealing with change, enjoy tackling new challenges and a variety of work
• An eye for detail as well as a commercial, pragmatic outlook
• Being self-aware, ability to identify gaps in knowledge and experience and ask for support when needed
• Proactivity with upskilling where required, actively identifying and pursuing new development areas
• Quick to adjust work priorities to meet the changing demands of both the market and internal clients

If you have these skills, experiences and attributes, we’d love to see an application!

What do we offer for this role?

• A competitive salary depending on location, skills, experience and qualifications
• Generous defined contribution pension scheme
• Annual performance related bonus and pay review
• Holiday allowance of 29 days plus bank holidays and the option to buy/sell up to 5 additional days
• Up to 40% discount for some Aviva products through “My Aviva Extras” plus discounts for Friends and Family (some exclusions apply)
• Excellent range of flexible benefits to include a matching share save scheme

Oh, and by the way…

At Aviva, we always ‘Care More’. It’s our thing. We’re all about our people – that’s you – so we can be pretty flexible. If you need to work from home some of the time or change your hours so you can pick up your kids or care for someone in your family, we’re very open to that. We’ll even try to bend work around your further studies or hobbies where we can.

We care deeply about welcoming people no matter where they’re from, how old they are or what disability they have. We encourage applications from every age, race, ethnicity, disability, gender, gender identity, religion, culture, sexual orientation, national origin, marital status, pregnancy, maternity or caring responsibility. We want our employees to bring their whole self to work and that starts with you!

As part of that we interview every disabled applicant* that meets the minimum criteria for the job. Just send us an email once you’ve applied, and we’ll make sure we interview you.

If you like the sound of all that, we’d love it if you could submit your application online. For an alternative method of applying, please give Dan Hopchet a call on: 0121 234 7625 or ping them an email at: Daniel.Hopchet@Aviva.com.

*As defined in The Equality Act 2010*. By ‘minimum criteria’ we mean you must provide us with evidence which demonstrates that you generally meet the level of competence required and have the qualifications, skills or experience defined as essential to perform the role.