Fintech startups are looking to hire senior professionals with legal and compliance expertise, said top executive search firms and industry experts.
Nearly one-fourth of the more than 200 senior legal and compliance moves in the financial services sector in the last one year was in fintechs that bolstered their legal teams, showed data from executive search firm Native.
Some of the recent moves include Aravind Venugopal who joined Acko as its first General Counsel from Khaitan & Co; Rohan Bhandari, CoinDcx’s head of compliance who came from Paytm; Shiva Kumar Tadikonda, who left DBS Bank to join as VP compliance at CoinSwitch Kuber; Gaurav Dugar, general counsel, CredAble from Shardul Amarchand; Tushar Tarun, head of legal for fintech & payments at Tata Digital who joined Cashfree Payments to head legal and compliance; Anubir Singh, who joined Paytm Payments Services from Pine Labs and Baljit Singh Kalha, who left law firm Titus & Co to join Stashfin as group general counsel.
“Fintechs across lending, payments, investments, trading, insurance, etc., have been actively seeking senior legal and compliance talent to manage the complex and evolving regulations,” said Vinal Vikamshi, director, corporate functions at Native.
Preference is strong for professionals from law firms due to diversified exposure and fungibility across legal intricacies, she said.
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“Momentum gaining around public policy, litigation, regulatory affairs and ESG (environmental, social and governance standards) are stimulating hiring a full-time senior resource,” Vikamshi added.The central government’s increased focus on digital payments and the Reserve Bank of India’s new digital lending guidelines are among some of the reasons many of these startups are looking to ramp up their legal teams, said experts.
Nilasha Mukherjee, managing consultant at search and advisory firm Vahura, said fintech startups are trying to reduce reliance on external counsels and depend more on internal legal talent to tackle the continuing regulatory overhang.
“The demand for litigators with criminal law expertise is rising, and in-house legal advice is critical for the development of innovative products,” she added.
Amit Nawka, partner deals & startups at PwC, said: “Most of these companies have by and large tech brains, but now with strengthening regulations, companies are looking for senior legal and regulatory experts to help them out.”
“Quite a few fintech startups have become reasonably large in the last 2-3 years. All this time there was a lot of emphasis on the tech aspect and there was a thin line between whether these are tech companies or regulated financial services entities. While these companies were maturing, regulatory bodies were also trying to understand the business models and their implications. In the initial years, regulators let these businesses play out and now they are coming up with regulations,” Nawka added.
“Every day there are many products being launched and each and every product is heavily regulated and there is a stiffening of rules and regulations,” said Neha Sharma, founder & chief executive of legal search and consulting firm Avimukta.
“Hence lawyers coming with experience and exposure to data privacy guidelines, who are more technology savvy are more in demand.” “Fintech is a niche area and not many people do this kind of work except banking and finance lawyers,” she added.