Senior Legal Manager - Financial Litigation & Regulatory Disputes

Senior Legal Manager – Financial Litigation & Regulatory Disputes

Company: PalmPay
Department: Legal
Reports To: Head of Legal
Location: Lagos, Nigeria (Pan-African Scope)
Employment Type: Full-time

Role Purpose

The Senior Legal Manager – Financial Litigation & Regulatory Disputes will lead PalmPay's litigation, regulatory investigation and complex dispute portfolio across Africa. This role is responsible for litigation strategy, financial crime recovery, court proceedings, regulatory engagement, external counsel management, and executive legal advisory. The successful candidate must be an experienced financial litigation lawyer capable of independently leading high-value, high-profile disputes while protecting the Company's commercial, regulatory and reputational interests.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop litigation strategy from pre-action assessment through judgment, appeal, settlement, and enforcement.
• Lead banking, fintech, commercial, regulatory, and financial crime litigation.
• Manage complex fraud, unauthorized transactions, chargeback, and asset recovery matters.
• Lead responses to injunctions, garnishee orders, subpoenas, freezing orders and preservation orders.
• Review and challenge defective court orders where legally appropriate.
• Represent the company before regulators, including CBN, EFCC, NFIU, FCCPC and law-enforcement agencies.
• Coordinate internal investigations involving fraud, AML, sanctions and financial crime.
• Manage external law firms, litigation budgets and legal strategy across jurisdictions.
• Advise executive management on legal risk, crisis response and sensitive matters.
• Establish litigation governance, reporting, KPIs and continuous improvement.

Required Qualifications

• LL.B and admission to practice in Nigeria. LL.M preferred.
• Minimum 10 years post-qualification experience.
• At least 5 years leading litigation for banks, fintechs or regulated financial institutions.
• Extensive commercial litigation, banking litigation and regulatory enforcement experience.
• Experience drafting pleadings, affidavits, witness statements and legal submissions.
• Strong courtroom strategy, negotiation and advocacy skills.
• Experience managing high-value disputes (preferably NGN 1 billion+).
• Experience supervising external counsel across multiple jurisdictions.

Preferred Experience

• Financial crime and fraud recovery
• Asset tracing and civil recovery
• Cross-border litigation
• International arbitration
• White-collar crime
• Regulatory investigations
• Digital payments and fintech

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic thinking
• Commercial judgement
• Crisis management
• Executive communication
• Stakeholder management
• Decision-making under pressure

KPIs

• Litigation success rate
• Financial recovery value
• Regulatory response timeliness
• Court-order compliance
• Reduction in litigation exposure
• External counsel performance
• Legal budget management

What PalmPay Offers

• Regional leadership exposure across Africa.
• Opportunity to build a best-in-class litigation function.
• Competitive compensation and performance incentives.
• Career progression to Director/Head of Litigation.

Ideal Candidate Profile

We are seeking a commercially minded financial litigation lawyer with deep banking or fintech experience, capable of independently leading complex litigation, regulatory investigations, external counsel and high-profile disputes involving regulators, courts and law-enforcement agencies.