Consultant, Corporate Governance

This is an important strategic role, delivering work every day for clients to improve their ability to manage risks associated with environmental, social, legal and regulatory issues; and help translate this work to external stakeholders like insurers. You’d be working with global organisations – from technology, to life sciences, to insurers, to the mining industry – to help them understand the legal and regulatory risks arising from their business models and transfer risk into the insurance markets.

Most of the time you’ll be ‘looking under the hood’ of companies to understand the threats to their business, board of directors and reputation, and how they should be setting up their risk management to mitigate these threats. Usually, we’re working with the CFO, General Counsel and or Chief Risk Officer/Head of Risk Management, and briefing at board level.

Some examples of recent and ongoing projects include:

• Supporting a client through one of the top 10 largest tech de-SPACs of 2021 by ensuring appropriate Directors and Officers insurance placement;
• Assisting one of the most exciting and innovative UK-based life sciences companies to IPO on the NASDAQ, providing financial analysis and risk assessment to help them place necessary insurance;
• Working alongside one of the world’s leading semi-conductor manufacturers to understand their exposure to geopolitical risks and how this could impact the company’s business model and legal risk position;
• Engaging with major Directors and Officers risk insurers in the Lloyd’s of London market to analyse their requirements for coverage, and working with clients to ensure these are met.

We’re also very keen on the successful candidate working on developing this service offering and exploring new ways to support our clients with the ever-changing landscape of environmental, social and governance requirements for operating on the global markets. There is also scope for you to work alongside our investigations and intelligence teams, to support our clients with corporate intelligence and risk advisory.

We’re huge believers in the power of cross-functional teams, learning new skills, and broadening the consulting knowledge of our existing team members to provide our clients with true trusted advisors, who can take a risk-led approach to helping them protecting their organisations from a range of threats.

Who are we looking for?

We’re very open minded about who this position would suit – and so predominantly we’re looking for particular character traits and experiences rather than knowledge or expertise in a particular sector. Do you:

• Have a real passion for, and obsession with the global financial markets and how they operate?
• Get on easily with people from a wide range of backgrounds?
• Enjoy crunching numbers and analysing company financials to understand their real potential?
• Become obsessed with identifying and fixing problems, and with researching detailed and appropriate potential ways of solving them?
• Find yourself reading extensively about new and exciting industries that you're unfamiliar with?
• Find it interesting to ‘get under the hood’ of well known organisations and see how they actually work?
• Have an interest in how organisations manage risks to their business model and reputation?
• Have experience dealing with sometimes demanding (but rewarding) clients?
• Feel you'd want to be ready to work with clients when they need you, even if it's on the weekend or in the middle of the night?
• Consistently read and are interested in current events, particularly how the operating environment is changing for organisations as a result of market shifts or trends?
• Have the ability to continuously process, organise and analyse information to reach a conclusion as part of a consulting project?
• Feel comfortable managing and delivering a project, including reacting to client queries and concerns, from beginning to end?
• Want to work really closely with a tight-knit team?

If you think all of these apply to you, and you have experiences that can back that up, we can teach you the rest. Experience in a similar client-facing role would be desirable, but is not required.

What kind of work would I be doing?

Like any job, it varies: we feel the work that we do is absolutely fascinating, and enables us to see parts of the world (and parts of organisations) that very few get to see. That being said, it’s not always possible to work on the most interesting projects all of the time: but you’ll definitely learn, a lot, consistently and build extremely close relationships with our clients and with the team. Your day to day would generally fall into a few different areas:

• Meeting with clients for the first time, and using your curiosity and interest to understand their organisation in detail.
• Identifying financial, reputational or legal risks that clients may face (for example, assessing the likelihood of class action lawsuits against the company) and how they can manage them.
• Outlining your solution in a proposal for the client in a way which is easy to read, graphical and convincing.
• Travelling to work with that client anywhere in the world – post-pandemic, we expect that travel will once again form a part of what we do.
• Working with individuals and teams within our clients organisation, collecting information and intelligence which could help them achieve an objective.
• Running workshops to gather information on the inner workings of an organisation and how they manage important risks.
• Helping clients to explain and justify their risk to insurers, including in the world famous Lloyd’s of London market.
• Monitoring events and trends in public markets and corporate litigation, and keeping an eye on how they could affect your clients.
• Help clients to deliver sometimes difficult messages about the level of their current corporate governance.
• Get involved in intelligence and investigations projects to broaden your experience - including everything from collecting human source information, to conducting surveillance.
• Spending a lot of time with the rest of the team socialising, visiting clients, meeting new people, and building up a really good knowledge of the wider risk advisory ecosystem.

Currently, we’re working from our office in Bermondsey Street, London Bridge, around 3-4 days a week. We completely understand some people’s desire for full remote working, but in our line of work it’s not really feasible – so this is definitely a position for someone that enjoys working with people on problems in the flesh. That having been said, people still work from home very regularly.

What's the package?

We’ve always felt that it’s really important to be totally transparent with our people about what we can offer. It’s also very important to us that our team are completely incentivised to do their best to help our clients, and feel comfortable that they have a future in a fast-growing, innovative firm where their personal growth is prioritised and they can have influence over what we do, the direction we’re going in, and the work we do for our clients. The successful candidate will receive:

• Between £50,000 and £70,000 per annum depending on experience.
• Benefit from full BUPA health insurance.
• Regular access to a training budget for external professional development courses, as well as courses we run internally (like Crisis Management or language courses).
• Be incentivised through a 10% commission on the gross profit of any consulting or technology engagements they win for themselves with new clients, with no cap.
• Flexible working and holiday arrangements (although we'd expect you to work usually in the London office, at least 2-3 days a week depending on projects).
• Have the opportunity to have a real say on what we do and how we do it, including our direction and culture in a small but high growth firm.
• Get to travel to engage with our clients on corporate governance and global market risks, both as part of projects and on business development trips.
• Cycle to Work scheme access.

What's the application process?

We tend to get in touch with particular individuals that fit the bill to take forward to a first round of interviews in an informal setting with our team, and then a remote assessment to test your analytical and report writing skills. From that point, we’ll then conduct a more formal face-to-face interview. Once that’s complete, we’ll check references with your permission.  

Every individual that gets to the final assessment phase will be automatically considered for future positions. The assessments will be designed to test your ability to absorb new information, scope out a problem, devise a solution and present it confidently and convincingly using writing, graphic design and any other skills you can muster to convince us of the merits of your chosen approach. We’ll also take time in the process for you to get to know our team, and you’ll also have the opportunity to spend time with individuals at a similar level to ask honest and open questions about what it’s like to work with us and about our culture.