Regulatory Lawyer​/Senior Lawyer, Europe & Americas

Overview

Role

Title:

Regulatory Lawyer/ Senior Lawyer, Europe & Americas

Role location: New York

About Westpac
:
We are Australia’s first bank and oldest company, and one of four major banking organisations in Australia. This opportunity sits in our New York office working for Westpac Institutional Bank (WIB), the division of Westpac, which services the needs of our corporate, institutional, and governmental clients.

About the Team: The Europe & Americas (E&A) Legal team is a collegiate corporate legal team providing high quality advice to support the international aspirations of WIB, a Division of Westpac Group. Through partnership with key internal and external stakeholders, this role will support the Westpac Group’s international legal and risk strategy by influencing, negotiating and consulting. Our legal advice is accurate, timely, cost effective and commercial.

You will provide US regulatory advice and legal support to WIB’s institutional business in Europe & Americas. These businesses provide finance solutions for Westpac’s institutional and corporate clients operating outside of Australia, predominantly in America, the UK and Europe via the Financial Markets (FM) and Corporate & Institutional Bank (CIB) lines of business (LOBs). In addition, you will provide legal advice to our US broker dealer, Westpac Capital Markets LLC.

• Provide high-quality legal advice across a broad spectrum of US financial regulatory matters, including banking, securities and broker ‑ dealer regulation, capital markets and derivatives, financial market infrastructure and supervisory expectations under key regulatory frameworks including those of the Federal Reserve, OCC, SEC and FINRA.
• Provide legal counsel to the FM and CIB LOBs, participate in new product proposals and strategic initiatives, provide subject matter expertise and interpretations of relevant US laws, rules, regulations and industry practices, and advise business management on legal and regulatory risks to the business.
• Support New York Branch and the US broker dealer with in ‑ branch regulatory, supervisory and governance issues. This includes advising on ongoing compliance with applicable regulatory requirements, regulatory engagement and exam support and a wide range of branch ‑ level legal matters typical of a growing US platform.
• Lead discrete regulatory initiatives—including operational resilience, third ‑ party risk management, outsourcing and governance enhancements—to ensure New York Branch and broker ‑ dealer policies, procedures and controls remain appropriate, effective and fit ‑ for ‑ purpose in a dynamic regulatory environment.
• Proactively identify, evaluate and contribute to the appropriate management of legal, regulatory and reputational risk by collaborating with second line compliance and the first line business controls team, follow relevant legal developments, participate in internal projects and escalate as appropriate.
• Ensure external legal resources are properly and efficiently selected and used, and ensure output produced by external counsel complies with our policies and requirements.
• Clearly communicate and appropriately escalate issues to the Head of Legal, E&A.
• Build and maintain stakeholder relationships with relevant business stakeholders in WIB International and Legal & Secretariat (L&S) colleagues (in particular, work closely with other colleagues across E&A Legal in New York and London and WIB Legal in Sydney) to ensure efficient and effective execution of legal support.
• Contribute to the strategic and operational performance of L&S by contributing new ideas and initiatives, developing “house views”, function-wide improvements and sharing knowledge.

You’ll be joining a highly supportive and collaborative team with international coverage during a period of Group Executive backed growth plans for WIB. In this role, you’ll be working in a collaborative and supportive team and work with senior stakeholders across our international offices.

Westpac in NY offer comprehensive range of benefits including flexibility and various leave entitlements. This includes generous annual leave entitlement with…