Senior Legal Counsel, Governance & Company Secretarial

Job description

You will serve as the principal governance advisor and strategic partner to the Boards, local management and executive committees of Wise’s Belgian and Dutch entities and their branches, which operate under the supervision of the National Bank of Belgium (NBB) and the De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) respectively. You will help ensure our corporate governance and operational resilience continue to meet the highest standards of governance discipline.

In this high-impact role, you will be responsible for sustaining and enhancing our subsidiary governance framework, supporting operational resilience, and navigating complex regulatory environments. You will act as the key liaison between local management and subsidiary Boards and the Group, ensuring that governance is not just a process, but a strategic enabler of our global scale-up.

You will advise the subsidiary Boards and executive committees directly and operate with a high degree of autonomy and mandate across multiple regulated entities and two regulators.

What you’ll do: Provide a full governance and company secretarial service to the relevant Wise entities. This includes:

• Regulatory and legal advisory: Act as trusted legal advisor to the Boards and local management on regulations affecting Wise’s European entities - including NBB and DNB supervisory expectations, and fit-and-proper and governance requirements. Advise on regulatory authorisations, variations and notifications, support supervisory engagement and regulatory correspondence, and translate EU and Belgian/Dutch regulatory change into practical board-level action. Provide independent legal judgment on the regulatory dimensions of new products, licences and group restructurings.

• Corporate governance ownership: Act as the primary governance advisor for multiple complex and regulated subsidiaries. Lead the end-to-end lifecycle of board and executive committee management, including agenda setting, driving high quality reporting and meeting minutes, tracking actions and maintaining statutory records.  

• Entity governance and regulatory compliance: Managing the annual board calendars to secure timely approvals, renewals, compliance attestations, statutory filings, and mandatory regulatory evaluations. Monitor changes in the legislative and regulatory landscape, advising the Board and senior management on the impact of new requirements and best practices.

• Stakeholder management: build and maintain strong, credible working relationships with internal and external stakeholders, including executives, non-executive directors and external service providers. Influence and constructively challenge senior decision-makers - including demanding and strongly-held personalities - presenting complex governance issues clearly and steering them towards pragmatic solutions that balance growth objectives with regulatory expectations.

• Governance maturity: Drive the maturity of our subsidiary governance as we expand through continuous process improvement and enhancing governance frameworks that adapt to a rapidly growing, global subsidiary group.