Manager — Legal 5 to 8 years | Bengaluru About Setu Setu empowers businesses to reimagine financial products for the next billion users. We build low-cost, modular API infrastructure so that businesses can go live with a fintech product or service in a matter of days, not months. We firmly believe that the only way to make financial products accessible to millions is to remove the red tape involved and switch to a completely digital infrastructure that can handle these small-ticket, high-volume transactions. We break these financial products into their fundamental building blocks and offer them as APIs to developers, startups, and enterprises. They can then package these APIs into highly custom apps, tailor-made for their customers. We believe that financial technology will be a core part of every company’s offering. And at Setu, we’re building the fintech infrastructure that will accelerate this. More about Setu What will you do at Setu? You will report to the Head - Legal & Compliance and General Counsel, being the first point of contact for day-to-day legal and compliance matters. While you will report to the legal leadership of Setu, the expectation is that you will function with a high level of independence and responsibility, ownership for the tasks you are handling, and learn to make quick decisions under the guidance of the team. This will also involve ensuring that you prudently escalate matters of importance to legal leadership. The legal & compliance team has a range of responsibilities, including: Crafting and modifying our contract templates, to make them as simple as possible while also protecting everyone’s interests. Supporting the business and operations teams in negotiating and closing out contracts within tight timelines, and ensuring that the execution of contracts is effectively tracked to support the assessment of the company’s performance metrics. Regulatory review of new products and features to ensure that they are compliant with law and policy, and supporting the product and business teams on questions of regulatory compliance that arise in the normal course of business. You will also have to support our business team in understanding permissible use cases for each product in line with regulatory guidelines, and ensuring that customers are appropriately vetted before onboarding. Understanding the regulatory frameworks created by the RBI and other financial sector regulators, NPCI circulars, and operating guidelines. In particular, a deep understanding of existing payments frameworks will be key, in addition to emerging platforms. Understanding the regulatory framework around Account Aggregators, to handle regulatory reporting and compliance for Setu’s associate entity, which is a licensed Account Aggregator. This will also require familiarising yourself with laws affecting a regulated entity, including but not limited to anti-money laundering laws, and KYC guidelines, and ensuring that you keep track of returns and declarations to be filed with the regulator. Advising product, engineering, design, and other internal teams on new product and feature development to ensure Setu’s products protect end-user interests, address policy considerations, and are compliant with applicable regulations by design. Ensuring that we comply with both the letter and spirit of data protection laws and setting up a contractual framework that ensures that our partners do the same. To this end, a working knowledge of India’s data protection framework and keeping track of new developments with respect to the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, will be essential. Participating in policy discussions around emerging regulatory frameworks, both through working with industry associations and by responding directly to calls for comment on draft laws and regulations. Understanding KYC and related policies, setting and monitoring KYC processes, proactively identifying possible weaknesses or risks, and keeping tabs on regulatory changes in this domain. Coordinating with internal and external teams to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, helping manage this process end-to-end, and maintaining compliance with license terms and reporting requirements. Coordinating with the Finance team and support for ongoing audits from a secretarial perspective. Serve as a point of contact for external regulatory audits, inquiries, and compliance matters. Act as the SPOC to the Pine Labs CoSec team to ensure timely compliance with all corporate secretarial activities for Setu entities. Who is the right fit for this role? To excel in this role you will need the following skills: Ability to take ownership: You have to be confident about scoping out your work, holding yourself accountable, and be comfortable taking judgment calls to keep day-to-day legal matters moving, while also knowing when to escalate. Attention to detail: Our contracts need to be carefully drafted so that they are easy to comprehend and fair to all parties so that we cut down on negotiation time without compromising our interests. Good negotiator: You will need to negotiate our relationships with large numbers of external partners, which means having a keen sense of fairness and great communication skills. Drive to stay informed: Navigating the world of fintech regulation means keeping track of changes in the law almost every day. This means you will need to have the drive to stay continually informed, keep track of new changes and help our teams understand how this affects our products and processes. Going beyond the law: Our legal and compliance function interacts closely with every team in the company, and we pride ourselves on our technical and fintech knowledge. This will mean developing an understanding of our products, business, technical processes, and information security. You will need to have the motivation to go beyond your comfort zone and learn about subjects beyond the law. Relentlessness: Closing partnerships means you will have to track tasks well and be unafraid to follow up. High level of organisation: Tracking and ensuring that legal and compliance matters are handled with the least friction involves maintaining up-to-date repositories, ensuring deadlines are met, and always having a handle on documentation. You need to be meticulous and ensure that all things legal are available when our teams need them. Comfortable with technology and technical jargon: While you don’t have to be an engineer, you must be unafraid of technical detail. We are a tech company, and this means having to understand (at a reasonable level of detail) how our products work because that is the only way to ensure in turn that our contracts work. Experience and qualifications: These are entry-level requirements that are essential for you to be able to fulfill these responsibilities: A law degree from an Indian university, or a passing grade in the Indian qualifying examination if you hold a foreign law degree. 5 to 8 years of work experience, preferably at a fintech, regulated financial institution, or a law firm where your work involved financial regulation. Why Setu? We will spare no efforts to ensure that Setu empowers you to do the most important and impactful work of your career— Opportunity to work closely with the founding team who built and scaled public infrastructure such as UPI, GST, Aadhaar, etc. We care deeply about your growth. So we work hard to provide you with— A fully stocked library and unlimited book budget. Tickets to conferences and industry events. Learning sessions where we invite both team members and external experts to teach you something new. Learning and development allowance that gives access to subscriptions, courses, certifications, music classes, and much more. Grow, learn, and improve with Setu! Kick-ass benefits including comprehensive health insurance for you and your family, personal accident and term life insurance, access to mental health counsellors, extraordinary coffee, and a beautiful office with lots of solid wood and natural light. We work hard to make sure our team is diverse and varied. We interview and hire purely on merit, skill, and competence—everything else is irrelevant. Our core DNA Our culture code—How We Move, defines the behaviours we expect from our people. When you display any of the six culture code elements, you demonstrate ‘Every Day is Game Day’. The six elements of our culture code— Take the shot: You decide fast and deliver right. Sign your work like an artist: You master what you do and take pride in it. Be the sherpa: You lead your crew on every expedition. Be the CEO of what you do: You own it and make things happen. Care with tough love: You empower others with trust, respect, and openness. Own tomorrow: You innovate for the customer and beyond. Join us if you want to be part of a company that’s building infrastructure that will directly impact financial inclusion and improve millions of lives. No cashbacks, no growth-hacks, no gimmicks. Just an audacious mission, and an obsession with craftsmanship in code.
Job Title
Legal Manager